Interactive visualizations of natural hazards data and associated uncertainties
Melanie Kunz · Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) · 2011
The occurrence of several natural calamities during the last decades demonstrated the power and the devastating impacts of natural hazards.Common approaches to block or reroute natural processes to mitigate these impacts consist of the building of protection measures such as dikes, avalanche defense structures, and debris-flow breakers.Such active measures, however, are very expensive and even tend to increase the damage potential as buildings and infrastructure continue to be built behind these protective structures.Hence, passive measures, foremost the alignment of land-use with natural conditions is promoted in order to decrease the damage potential in an affordable way.Hazard maps form the basis for this spatial planning task by indicating areas that are not suitable for a certain land-use due to the presence of natural hazards.