Publication of: Occurrence of partial and total coseismic ruptures of segmented normal fault systems: Insights from the Central Apennines, Italy by Iezzi et al. (2019)

Francesco Iezzi (PhD student, Birkbeck) together with Prof Gerald Roberts (Birkbeck), Dr Joanna Faure Walker (IRDR) and Ioannis Papanikolaou (Agricultural University of Athens) have published a detailed study of the long-term displacements across the fault responsible for the 2009 L’Aquila Earthquake, Italy, and the surrounding faults. This reveals that the different faults are behaving together so that the displacement across the system of faults looks similar to if it were one larger fault on ten thousand and million year timescales. This finding can help provide clues regarding the relative local seismic hazard between the different fault segments. The study also provides evidence that the vertical displacement (throw) across a fault increases across fault bends, a result that has been demonstrated in previous papers by the research group (e.g. Faure Walker et al., 2009; Wilkinson et al., 2015, Iezzi et al., 2018). The Iezzi et al. (2019) paper discusses the synchronised and geometrically controlled activity rates on the studied faults in terms of the propensity for floating earthquakes, multi-fault earthquakes, and seismic hazard.

Photograph of damage following the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, taken by Joanna Faure Walker while accompanying the EEFIT mission.

Last month, I was very fortunate to be able to participate in the delivery of a two-day workshop on Structural Mitigation and Increasing Resilience of Schools to Multi-Hazards in Manila, Philippines as part of the Philippines Resilience of Schools to Multi-Hazard (PRISMH) project. I joined the UCL EPICentre team in a visit to project collaborators De La Salle University (Manila) and Xavier University (Cagayan de Oro).

The workshop was based around methods, techniques and data used and collected as part of the actual PRISMH investigation, and introduced participants (attended came from academia, government, the private sector) to the most common deficiencies and failures observed in existing school infrastructure across the Philippines. As the Philippines is a multi-hazard environment, these weaknesses were examined in reference to exposed to various types of natural hazards including earthquake, flood and windstorm. Looking at the wide variety of the building typology and unpredictability of hazard intensity, different methods of data collection and exposure analysis were demonstrated in order to prioritise the most vulnerable structures, susceptible to life threatening damage and economic losses.

The physical integrity of buildings is only part of the story however, and the workshop also introduced knowledge and experience around challenges facing early warning systems, the identification, suitability and access to schools as emergency evacuation shelters and resource distribution hubs, as well as designing and implementing evacuation plans. I was there to represent the work and preliminary findings of Dr Joanna Faure Walker and Dr Alexandra Tsioulou, who emphasise the social importance of schools as centres of community, education institutions, and critically when a hazard risk arises, evacuation centres, emergency (and temporary) shelters, and aid distribution centres. My PhD work in the Philippines focusses on early warnings and temporary shelter in the Philippines, and so this was great way of exploring schools that function as shelters in more detail, as well as building relationships among key public, private and academic stakeholders.

The workshop was followed by a Stakeholders Forum first in Manila, and then in Xavier University in the city of Cagayan de Oro (CdeO), where the fieldwork campaign for PRISMH was conducted. This was my favourite part as it was a chance to report on the initial findings of the project and to engage the people at the heart of this research. It was a wonderful example of taking work back to where it originated, and of delivering real foundations on which people can adapt and build tools and resources that can help well beyond their original scope. The attendees included the Mayor of CdeO, officials from the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (RDRRMC) and the Philippines Department of Education.

See the Xavier University news article here

About the PRISMH Project

Start: 1st April 2017 / End: 30th Sepember 2019

The PRISMH project, led by Prof Dina D’Ayala, Dr Carmine Galasso and Dr Joanna Faure Walker aims to develop an advanced resilience assessment framework for school infrastructure subjected to multiple natural hazards in the Philippines. The project investigates the effectiveness of buildings retrofit measures and social preparedness measures as means of preventing casualties, reducing economic losses and maintaining functionality of the school infrastructure and its role within the community in the event of natural disasters. In particular the project addresses risks from seismic, wind and flood hazards. The resilience assessment protocol will be used by civil protection and school authorities to improve their preparedness and implementation.

Funding Bodies
British Council (Newton Fund Grant Agreement Institutional Links)
Philippines’s Commission on Higher Education (CHED)

In 1908 a Mw7.1 earthquake struck the town of Messina in Sicily, Italy.  This earthquake killed over 80,000 people making it the most deadly earthquake in Europe since 1900. Despite causing great losses and prompting research into earthquake environmental effects worldwide, the fault responsible for this earthquake has before now remained a source of contention.

However, new research has identified the fault responsible for this event. This was done using elastic half-space modelling and levelling data from 1907–1909. This research has highlighted the importance of studying mapped faults to locate past events.

This work was led by PhD student Marco Meschis (Birkbeck College) in collaboration with researchers from UCL IRDR, Birkbeck College, University of Plymouth and Università degli Studi dell’Insubria.

Meschis, Roberts, Mildon, Robertson, Michetti and Faure Walker (2019) Slip on a mapped normal fault for the 28^thDecember 1908 Messina earthquake (Mw 7.1) in Italy, Scientific Reports, doi:10.1038/s41598-019-42915-2

Recent IRDR research on Italian earthquakes includes:

Iezzi,  Mildon, Faure Walker, Roberts, Wilkinson, Robertson, (2018) Coseismic Throw Variation Across Along-Strike Bends on Active Normal Faults: Implications for Displacement Versus Length Scaling of Earthquake Ruptures, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 

Faure Walker J.P., Visini F., Roberts G., Galasso C., McCaffrey K., and Mildon Z., (2018) Variable Fault Geometry Suggests Detailed Fault-Slip-Rate Profiles and Geometries Are Needed for Fault-Based Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA), BSSA 109 (1), 110-123

Blog post by Dr Emma Wilson and Professor Indra Overland

A pioneering new international panel is currently recruiting members to help promote better environmental performance in Arctic resource extraction industries, while pushing the boundaries of applied research.

The International Panel on Arctic Environmental Responsibility (IPAER) was introduced to London audiences on 17^th October 2018 at University College London (UCL), at an event hosted by the London Polar Group and the Polar Research and Policy Initiative. The session was led by the architect of IPAER, Research Professor Indra Overland of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) in Oslo, and Dr Emma Wilson, independent researcher and consultant, who is an IPAER Advisory Board member. The aim of the event was to raise awareness about the initiative, stimulate debate and encourage new members to join.

Hammerfest, Norway

The IPAER is an independent group of experts who have been tasked with assessing the environmental performance of oil, gas and mining companies in the Arctic, based on their professional or lived experience of these industries.

Issues to be considered by the Panel range from conservation to pollution prevention, from Indigenous rights to transparency and public reporting. Panel members are expected to be experts in some, but not all, of these questions. The IPAER aims to cover the full range of issues by recruiting a balanced and broad range of Panel members, including technical industry experts, local community and civil society representatives, academics, industry consultants, journalists and regulators.

Damaged forest at old drilling site, Komi Republic, Russia 

Panel members take part in a simple perceptions survey, which requires them to identify the companies they are familiar with and then rank them in relation to one another. The results will be published as an open-access ranking of companies.

Panel members are expected to base their perceptions on the facts and realities that they have encountered through their professional and lived experience. Where perceptions are not based on fact, but on lack of information or misinformation, this raises the issue of more effective, accurate and well-targeted communication on the part of industry, the government, the media and civil society. We hope the IPAER can trigger more of a debate around this question, and ensure that the right issues are discussed more objectively in the public domain.

The IPAER is an experiment in what could be called ‘governance without enforcement’, as a complement to legal and formal regulation. We hope that it will trigger public debate and dialogue, internal corporate thinking, and proactive responses from industry, stimulating an environmental ‘race to the top’. But its success depends on our ability to recruit as many Panel members as possible.

If you would like to become a member of the Panel, we would love to hear from you!

Please contact:

Research Professor Indra Overland: ino@nupi.no

Dr Emma Wilson: emma.wilson@ecwenergy.com

Hammerfest, Norway photo credit: Dr Ilan Kelman

Damaged forest at old drilling site, Komi Republic, Russia photo credit: Dr Emma Wilson

Blog post by Justine Uyimleshi and Emmanuel Agbo

The natural hazard workshop is an annual event organised by the Natural Hazard Centre in collaboration with the University of Colorado Boulder around the field of disaster management and emergency response to trigger interactions and contributions from different experts in the field of disaster management and humanitarian responses. This year’s workshop, which was held in Omni Interlocken Hotel Boulder, Broomfield Colorado, from 8 – 11 July 2018 attracted over five hundred participants including disaster managers, emergency response personnel, practitioners and academia from around the world with different expertise in interactive sessions around pertinent issues that globally result in loss of lives, property damage, loss of economic values and human displacement. As a part of the IRDR strategy for promoting continuous research around disaster risk reduction (DRR) and expansion of networks in strengthening collaborations with other disaster management and emergency response entities across the world, the Institute through its research assistance funding provided support for two of its PhD researchers, Justine Uyimleshi and Emmanuel Agbo, to take part in this international event. Our participation in the workshop availed us the opportunity of interaction amid experts with different knowledge about disasters and present our research to the international communities.

Presenting our research

The workshop was full of several concurrent sessions that created opportunities for vast interaction around social media and disasters, data and partnership need for improved disaster response, cascading disasters, institutional settings, community impact and recovery from disasters, Health and wellbeing of disaster respondents, among others which enriched our understanding of the different thematic areas of disaster management. Most interestingly, the workshop further availed us the opportunity during the researcher’s meeting to moderate sessions of paper presentations as efforts in promoting the IRDR commitment in global events.  Also, of great attention from the workshop was our meeting with Jim Murphy, project director, Civil/Water Resource Engineering, DC Metro Area. Jim in admiration of our presence in the workshop and presentation during the workshop sessions demonstrated a benevolent act towards us and offered us a tour to the wild fire and flood devastating sites in Broomfield.

On this tour, we were able to see the available response facilities, and measures that are in place to quell the likely impact from future occurrence of these hazards. Finally, we extended the exploration of Colorado to the Gold hill town, where the coal exploit took place and the city mountains, which are part of the historical features of Colorado. Resulting from our experience of this workshop, we wish to express our profound appreciation to the IRDR for their continuous support. The workshop was greatly an event worth attending.

Angus Naylor, an IRDR Masters student alumni and Masters Prize Winner, has published the research conducted for his Independent Research Project. The research was carried out as part of his MSc Risk, Disaster and Resilience with me, his project supervisor, and our collaborator at Tohoku University IRIDeS (International Research Institute of Disaster Science), Dr Anawat Suppasri.

Following the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, UCL-IRDR and Tohoku University IRIDeS wanted to join forces to learn more about both the fundamental science and impacts of disasters both in Japan and around the world. Naylor’s recently published paper adds to other collaborative outputs from the two institutes: Mildon et al., 2016, investigating Coulomb Stress Transfer within the area of earthquake hazard research; Suppasri et al., 2016 investigating fatality ratios following the 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami; and IRDR Special Report 2014-01 on the destruction from Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines. The two institutions have met on a number of occasions, and have an upcoming symposium in October 2018.

In 2014, three and half years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami destroyed much of Tohoku’s coastline, I led and Dr Anawat Suppasri organised a joint UCL-IRDR and Tohoku University IRIDeS team, visiting residents of six temporary housing complexes in Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. While there, we used written questionnaires and informal group interviews to investigate the suitability of early warning systems and the temporary housing among the elderly population affected by this event.

When analysing the results, we found overall that age was not the principal factor in affecting whether a warning was received, but did play a significant role regarding what was known before the warning was received, whether action was taken and how temporary and permanent housing was viewed. The results suggest that although the majority of respondents received some form of warning (81%), no one method of warning reached more than 45% of them, demonstrating the need for multiple forms of early warning system alerts. Furthermore, only half the respondents had prior knowledge of evacuation plans with few attending evacuation drills and there was a general lack of knowledge regarding shelter plans following a disaster. Regarding shelter, it seems that the “lessons learned” from the 1995 Kobe Earthquake were perhaps not so learnt, but rather many of the concerns raised among the elderly in temporary housing echoed the complaints from 16 years earlier: solitary living, too small, not enough heating or sound insulation and a lack of privacy.

An example of Temporary Housing following the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami visited during the fieldwork for this study (Photograph: Dr Joanna Faure Walker)

The research supports previous assertions that disasters can increase the relative vulnerabilities of those already amongst the most vulnerable in society. This highlights that in order to increase resilience against future disasters, we need to consider the elderly and other vulnerable groups within the entire Early Warning System process from education to evacuation and for temporary housing in the transitional phase of recovery.

The paper, ‘Suitability of the early warning systems and temporary housing for the elderly population in the immediacy and transitional recovery phase of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami’ published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, can be accessed for free until 26th July here, after this date please click here for standard access.

The authors are grateful for the fieldwork funds which came from The Great British Sasakawa Foundation funding to UCL-IRDR and MEXT’s funding to IRIDeS. The joint UCL-IRDR1 and IRIDeS2 fieldwork team comprised Joanna Faure Walker1, Anawat Suppasri2, David Alexander1, Sebastian Penmellen Boret2, Peter Sammonds1, Rosanna Smith1, and Carine Yi2.

Angus Naylor is currently doing a PhD at Leeds University
Dr Joanna Faure Walker is a Senior Lecturer at UCL IRDR
Dr Anawat Suppasri is an Associate Professor at IRIDeS-Tohoku University

Article written by Mark Shortt

For two weeks in March 2018, I travelled to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard to conduct field experiments on sea ice as part of my PhD research. Svalbard is located at 74°-81°N, around halfway between mainland Norway and the geographic north pole. Travelling to Svalbard requires taking a 2-hour flight from the Norwegian city of Tromsø to Longyearbyen, the largest settlement on the archipelago with a population of just over 2000 people.

Location of Svalbard relative to mainland Europe, and a map showing the location of the field site

Once arrived in Longyearbyen, I went to the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), a local university specialising in Arctic studies. Here I met the team of researchers who I would be joining on the field expedition, led by Aleksey Marchenko, Professor of Ice Mechanics at UNIS. The field site was located within Van Mijenfjorden, an 83km long fjord approximately 50km south of Longyearbyen. Getting to the field site involved a roughly 3-hour long snowmobile journey from Longyearbyen to Svea, a small mining settlement located on the northern coast of the fjord. Here it was possible to stay in the mining lodges and eat in the communal canteen. The field site was located on the sea ice within the fjord, around a 10 minute snowmobile journey from Svea.

The edge of the sea ice cover in Van Mijenfjorden, located at Cape Amsterdam. Hidden in the clouds in the background is the Skobreen glacier

Sea ice occurs when the temperature of the air is lower than the temperature of the sea water for prolonged periods of time, reaching its maximum extent towards the end of the cold season. For the Northern Hemisphere, this corresponds to around late February and early March, which is why the field work was arranged at this time. The initial ice thickness at the field location within the fjord was around 60cm, but increased over the two week period. The air temperature over the field work period ranged between -10°C and -25°C.

The field site located on the sea ice within Van Mijenfjord

My research focuses on investigating the physical properties and strength of consolidated sea ice. The process of consolidation occurs in rafted and ridged sea ice – two commonly occurring features in the Arctic sea ice cover. Over time, freeze-bonds form between the constituent ice pieces, resulting in an overall strengthening of the features. When driven by winds and/or ocean currents, consolidated rafted and ridged sea ice may pose considerable risks to offshore structures and vessels operating in the region. It is therefore important that the physical and mechanical properties of the ice are well characterised over the consolidation period.

Large scale consolidation experiments were conducted with the aim of determining the time required for stacked blocks of sea ice to bond. Two experiments were set-up with differing ice orientations to investigate the effect of brine drainage on the physical properties and strength over the consolidation period. In both experiments, the temperature and salinity profiles through the ice were measured. In addition, the crystal structure of the freeze-bond layers formed between the ice blocks were deduced by taking thin sections of cored samples.

Experimental arrangement for field tests on sea ice consolidation

Other tests were conducted by the field group, with the aim of investigating the mechanical properties of sea ice. These included cantilever and Sodhi beam tests, drop block tests, small scale tensile and bending tests as well as full scale uniaxial compression tests. The influence of a vibroplate on the mechanical experiments was also investigated.

Due to incoming bad weather we were forced to leave the field site and return to Longyearbyen one day early. Unfortunately, this meant that I was limited in the number of strength tests that were performed in my experiment, the majority of which were scheduled for the final day. However, I believe that the results obtained will prove a useful comparison to similar smaller-scale tests to be conducted in the laboratories at UCL.

I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Peter Sammonds for providing feedback and recommendations for my experimental plan prior to the field expedition. Special thanks to Aleksey Marchenko for the invitation for field work, and for the assistance in developing the experimental methodology. I also appreciate the support and hospitality of the other members of the field team throughout the expedition. Finally, thank you to the members of SAMCoT for providing the funds necessary for the undertaking of the experiments.

Blog post written by Hui Zhang, Cate Howes and Peter Dodd

A group of students from the IRDR once again joined the Fukushima research trip, conducting fieldwork in the triple disaster affected area in Japan for a week in January this year. We collected information on how the Fukushima Prefecture and local communities are trying to recover from the disaster and rebuild a new life in the nuclear contaminated area. Here is a summary of our week:

Monday 15th January

On arrival in Fukushima, we were met by a lead engineering team and given a briefing on the events that had taken place in 2011, and the remaining effects on local prefectures such as the neighboring prefecture of Futaba and the residents that used to live there. Then we visited Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant – a sight that we feel privileged to have experienced and were impressed by the resilience and appetite to recover from the disaster, and to learn so as to effectively move forward in the regeneration process. This was followed by an in-depth discussion and question and answer session between the team and two respective representatives of TEPCO, to help stimulate our appetites for our individual areas for research.

Tuesday 16th January

Visiting the High School

Our first stop was at the Robotic Limb Factory – an innovation company, originally focusing on the creation of mobile phone components, now pushing the boundaries on physical movement assistance after disasters. Here we learnt that since the disaster, employee numbers had been slow to return, however they were working hard to push Fukushima as a place for testing new and vital technologies, and above all a desire to work in the region. Then we went to one of the hardest-hit areas named Futaba-gun. Our first stop was a graveyard, home to the remnants of the previous residents of the unfortunate village, completely wiped out by the Tsunami. Here we were also taken to the waterfront by the local port, recently repaired and home to a very small 20-strong fishing fleet, to reflect on the damage caused.

Our final visit of the day was to a previous high school, now re-utilised by the prefecture as a museum for visitors. Here we were greeted by a local storyteller, who reminisced with us as we sat in the junior student chairs, of how the local area had been effected and how she had been scared for the safety of her grandson after the disasters.

Wednesday 17th January

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

On Wednesday we were privileged to spend time visiting some incredible members of the local area, who work tirelessly to rebuild and strengthen their communities. We started the day hearing from Aoki-san, a local storyteller who talked to us about the evacuation of her town after the nuclear accident. We travelled to the J-Village and spoke with Chef Nishi, who set up a restaurant to help the workers travelling to assist in the stablisation and cleanup of Fukushima Daiichi. We ended the day as guests at the Futaba Mirai Gakuen High School. We were treated to a presentation from the students on their views of the situation in Fukushima. We then heard poignant speeches from two students, regarding their personal experiences since March 2011. The whole group were deeply moved by this testimony, and inspired by the positivity and kindness of the students.

Thursday 18th January

Press coverage: Fukushima Minpo paper

We spent a fascinating morning at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Koriyama City. We were given a full tour of the facility, and were very impressed with the innovative research into renewable energy that the centre is undertaking. Later, we took part in a thought-provoking workshop with government officials and students from Fukushima University and High School, discussing the future of the prefecture. That evening, we were invited to a reception welcoming us to the city. We very much enjoyed speaking further with students and officials from the earlier workshop, and to hear their thoughts and plans for the future of Fukushima.

Friday 19th January

Press coverage: Fukushima Minpo paper

On the last day, we visited the electric power station that conducts binary generation using the heat from the Tsuchiyu hot spring located in the upstream of Arakawa river. It is an example of local efforts to create new energy alternatives to nuclear power. We then went to the Environmental Regeneration Plaza in Fukushima City, where we were told about the progress of environmental recovery in Fukushima, about radiation and about environmental regeneration such as interim storage sites.

After the site visit, we met with the Governor of Fukushima Prefecture, Mr Masao Uchibori. The Governor expressed his thanks for our visit and listened to our impressions of the recovery in Fukushima. We then had a lecture on disaster prevention in the Crisis management Centre of Fukushima Prefecture.

We concluded our 5-day trip to Fukushima on 20^th February and returned to London. It was an amazing experience and insight into post-disaster recovery and Japanese culture, and we will continue to pay attention to the reconstruction of Fukushima into the future.

Article by Peter Sammonds

This November, I joined a residential workshop for the Lancet Commission on Migration and Health at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy.

Workshop attendees

The Lancet Commission is investigating migration as the frequently overlooked core determinant of health and well-being, as it is neglected as a global health priority. It is led by Professor Ibrahim Abubakar, Director, UCL Institute for Global Health. The commissioners are from all over the world and from health, law, economics, migration, disaster sectors. The commission’s 30,000 word report will be published in the Lancet in 2017.

As well as participating in the commission workshop, the Humanitarian Institute and IRDR also joined the Institute for Global Health in organising a scenario workshop on the forced migration of the Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh. The scenario workshop addressed a health crises (measles) and natural hazard (cyclone with flooding and landslides). The scenario workshop will feed into the Lancet Commission and a report will be produced.

Article by Emmanuel Agbo

The recent devastating effects of natural hazards globally, such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, erosion, tsunamis, and landslides, in spite of the many predictive, defensive and reduction measures, call for great concern. Though this situation is often largely attributable to climate change, population growth and urbanisation, its catastrophic effect to humans and the environment, shows to a greater extend the limitations of science and technology and the many disasters risk reduction measures in disaster management. It also highlights a potential need for more proactive measures towards disaster risk reduction.

Nonetheless, government commitment and willingness to undertake disaster risk reduction measures proves to be a veritable tool for effectiveness in disaster management. While the viability of this tool is undoubtably clear, its implementation often becomes distorted in most developing nations. This is so, as the shared responsibility between the state, the federal and the local government, in a top-down disaster operational approach as practice by most developed economies and adopted by many developing nations, suffers lots of implementation flaws. This occurs frequently within federated nations, where each government level is viewed as a sovereign state. This approach of emergency management places the civil protection measures at the mercy of politicians, who often prefer the provision of relief material to disaster victims in a bid to secure cheap political points rather than engaging in activities that will better prepare the vulnerable towards disaster incidents.

In recognition of these challenges, and in the quest to better prepare for disasters, my research supposes that locally institutionalising an emergency management culture within developing nations, serves to quell inconsistencies in its emergency operational framework. As all disasters, regardless of scale, happen first in communities, the local people are always the first to address its occurrences. To achieve greater preparedness, the level of information and awareness of hazards, as well as the potential mitigation strategies at the local level, needs be enhanced. To this end my research, through the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction research fund assistance, recently involved undertaking a field assessment of community perceptions of flood hazards, preparedness, and response within a number of flood vulnerable communities in Nigeria. Its preliminary findings point to poor preparedness and weak knowledge of flood emergency response, weak mitigation measures and poor defense mechanism. Also of notable finding is the gap in communication between the civil protection agencies and the rural vulnerable communities during and after disaster incidents. While most of these factors exist, and continually require review in most developing nations, there is a need for demonstrating complete structures to improve on these challenges. This is the focus of my research.