Search results for "disaster"

Towards a Framework for Cross-Sector Collaboration: Implementing a Resilience Information Portal

2017

Municipalities play an integral part in the strive for resilient societies. A resilient municipality is not only prepared for short-term shocks such as natural disasters but also more successful in mastering long-term stresses such as profound in-creases or decreases of population. Backed by a large-scale research project we have developed a Resilience Information Portal (RIP). It serves as an artefact to support cross-sector collaboration within a municipality. The core challenges in implementing such a portal reside not in the technological work, though. Rather, it needs to be implemented in the communication and IT strategy of a municipality and be tailored to the processes. In this arti…

Il diritto umano a un alloggio adeguato nei processi di ricostruzione a seguito di disastri naturali e di conflitti armati

2011

On the use of unmanned aerial systems for environmental monitoring

2018

[EN] Environmental monitoring plays a central role in diagnosing climate and management impacts on natural and agricultural systems; enhancing the understanding of hydrological processes; optimizing the allocation and distribution of water resources; and assessing, forecasting, and even preventing natural disasters. Nowadays, most monitoring and data collection systems are based upon a combination of ground-based measurements, manned airborne sensors, and satellite observations. These data are utilized in describing both small-and large-scale processes, but have spatiotemporal constraints inherent to each respective collection system. Bridging the unique spatial and temporal divides that li…

Apokalipsa spełniona: casus epidemii AIDS

2020

Disasters are hardly ever unequivocal. Any attempt to sort them out remains a forever open task. A natural part of everyday life in the past, disasters have been reinvented by the modern world as a challenge that essentially needs to be eliminated from public life. Due to the dramatic expansion of humans and human activity, one can hardly call them ‘natural’ anymore. This article focuses on disasters and their significant culture-forming potential, discussing it primarily on the example of the AIDS epidemic. With this new epidemic, the catastrophic vision of history was rekindled and a specific (post-)apocalyptic social climate was created. AIDS, called the plague of the 20th century, reviv…

2017

Abstract. Remote sensing of the gaseous composition of non-eruptive, passively degassing volcanic plumes can be a tool to gain insight into volcano interior processes. Here, we report on a field study in September 2015 that demonstrates the feasibility of remotely measuring the volcanic enhancements of carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen fluoride (HF), hydrogen chloride (HCl), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and bromine monoxide (BrO) in the downwind plume of Mt. Etna using portable and rugged spectroscopic instrumentation. To this end, we operated the Fourier transform spectrometer EM27/SUN for the shortwave-infrared (SWIR) spectral range together with a co-mounted UV spectrometer on a mobile platform in…

A multi-purpose, multi-rotor drone system for long-range and high-altitude volcanic gas plume measurements

2021

A multi-rotor drone has been adapted for studies of volcanic gas plumes. This adaptation includes improved capacity for high-altitude and long-range, real-time SO2 concentration monitoring, long-range manual control, remotely activated bag sampling and plume speed measurement capability. The drone is capable of acting as a stable platform for various instrument configurations, including multi-component gas analysis system (MultiGAS) instruments for in situ measurements of SO2, H2S, and CO2 concentrations in the gas plume and portable differential optical absorption spectrometer (MobileDOAS) instruments for spectroscopic measurement of total SO2 emission rate, remotely controlled gas samplin…

Unrest at the Nevados de Chillán volcanic complex: a failed or yet to unfold magmatic eruption?

2018

Resuming erupting activity at volcanoes that have been long quiescent poses a significant challenge to hazard assessment, as it require assessment of whether the change in activity is an isolated event or the beginning of a new eruptive sequence. Such inception is often poorly characterised as quiescent volcanoes tend to be poorly equipped and not extensively monitored, especially with respect to gas geochemistry. Here, we report gas composition and flux measurements from a newly opened vent at the very onset of eruptive activity at the Nevados de Chillán volcanic complex (Chile) in January-February 2016. The molar proportions of H2O, CO2, SO2, H2S and H2 gases are found to be 98.4, 0.97, 0…

Degassing of halogens from basaltic volcanism: Insights from volcanic gas observations

2009

Abstract The currently available data set of S–Cl–F abundances in volcanic gas plumes and high-temperature fumarolic gas samples from basaltic volcanism is reviewed here in the attempt to derive constraints on the modes of halogen degassing from mafic silicate melts. Apart from large volcano-to-volcano variations, reflecting remarkable differences in volatile abundances in the source magmas, each of the explored volcanoes displays large changes of SO2/HCl and SO2/HF ratios with the style of volcanic activity, with HCl/HF staying fairly constant. Halogen abundances are low and SO2/HCl and SO2/HF are high when fresh (volatile-rich) magmas sustain degassing, as during explosive eruptions, at t…

Total volatile flux from Mount Etna

2008

[1] The Total Volatile (TV) flux from Mount Etna volcano has been characterised for the first time, by summing the simultaneously-evaluated fluxes of the three main volcanogenic volatiles: H2O, CO2 and SO2. SO2 flux was determined by routine DOAS traverse measurements, while H2O and CO2 were evaluated by scaling MultiGAS-sensed H2O/SO2 and CO2/SO2 plume ratios to the UV-sensed SO2 flux. The time-averaged TV flux from Etna is evaluated at ∼21,000 t·day−1, with a large fraction accounted for by H2O (∼13,000 t·day−1). H2O dominates (≥70%) the volatile budget during syn-eruptive degassing, while CO2 and H2O contribute equally to the TV flux during passive degassing. The CO2 flux was observed to…

The fumarolic CO2 output from Pico do Fogo volcano (Cape Verde)

2020

The Pico do Fogo volcano, in the Cape Verde Archipelago off the western coasts of Africa, has been the most active volcano in the Macaronesia region in the Central Atlantic, with at least 27 eruptions during the last 500 years. Between eruptions fumarolic activity has been persisting in its summit crater, but limited information exists for the chemistry and output of these gas emissions. Here, we use the results acquired during a field survey in February 2019 to quantify the quiescent summit fumaroles' volatile output for the first time. By combining measurements of the fumarole compositions (using both a portable Multi-GAS and direct sampling of the hottest fumarole) and of the SO2 flux (u…