Videos and Images

 These are images from the stop disaster game, where you provide defenses against disasters in order to save peoples' lives.  The strategy I used is to place the school, hospital, and hotels away from the shore line and at higher elevation.  I also upgraded every building by raising the foundation of the houses, having an evacuation alarm system, and providing courses in disasters.  Also I put sand dunes on the edge of the shores, coconut trees, and mangroves in the shallow waters to provide defenses against the tsunami. I also built more housing with raised foundations so the whole population had housing.  The raised foundations of the houses allowed water and debris to pass through underneath the houses. In hopes of reducing the cost of damages and people injured, my main strategy was to upgrade every building and provide other defenses along the shoreline.

 For the next strategy I had to kill as many people as possible and cause as much damage as possible. I put all the hotels, hospitals, and new houses I built right along the shoreline and demolished the mangroves so they did not provide any natural protection. I also did not upgrade any of the houses so they were not raised. The community center did not have any evacuation training, a radio system to warn people of the tsunami, alarm systems, or building reinforcement.

Here is a map I made of Historical U.S. hurricanes from 1950-2004.  The different colored lines represent different decades and the thickness in the colored line represents what category the hurricane was. I have labeled a few of the hurricanes in the map to show this.  I am using the Engineering paradigm approach with this data which basically uses science and technology.  In order to take a complexity based approach to this hazard I would need data on environmental change such as deforestation and climate change and the concentration of people in rural and urban areas.

This is a map I made of earthquakes that have occurred around the world.  The different color and sizes of the dots represent different categories of earthquakes, which can be seen in the legend.  Most of the major earthquakes are concentrated in narrow geographic belts.

 

This is a map we made in our Drought lab showing which areas in the U.S. had the most severe drought this September.  The red and orange colours represent extremely to severely dry, respectively.   The blue colours represent wetter areas.  As you can see in the map the Southern and Midwestern parts of the U.S. are extreme or severely dry.

 

We also made this map in the Drought lab which compares current crop yields and soil orders.  The dark green areas represent low crop yield whereas light green areas represent high crop yields. 

This is a risk assessment map I made in our Earthquake lab.  The dark red and yellow colors show a higher probability of ground shaking to occur in the next 50 years.  In areas where there is a higher probability for shaking/ground motion to occur, there have also been more earthquakes.  With this information, possible impacts an earthquake may have can be reduced such as building hazards, better building construction, emergency drills and education. 

 

This is a map comparing building status and building damage density in a Northridge, CA earthquake.  In areas of green and red, which represent ranks of liquification, there was more building damage and in areas of yellow there was very little building damage. Also, where there was a greater amount of building damage there were unsafe building statuses as well.  

This map compares PGA (peak ground acceleration) and building damage density.  The areas with a darker blue color, have a higher PGA than areas with a lower PGA in the light blue color.  In areas with a high PGA, there are also higher amounts of building damage.

This map is similar to the map above, but it compares PGV (peak ground velocity) and building damage density.  Same as above, areas with a high PGV (green) were also areas where high amounts of building damage occurred.  Lower PGV areas in red, had lower amounts of building damage.

 This map shows the top 5 countries with the most volcanic eruptions, they are represented by the bright blue color.  Indonesia is at the top with 651 volcanic eruptions, the rest are as follows: Japan at 544, United States 355, Russia 262, and Italy 228.  These volcanic eruptions all have a similar characteristic where they occur right along the plate boundaries. 

This map was made in a new type of software we used called Arcscene.  It is a pretty boring map showing Mt. Rainer, I will follow up this map with a better one showing elevation and topography.

I created this map using the same Arcscene software, but this map shows elevation, land cover, and the lahar on Mt. Rainer.  Land cover data shows where woodlands, grass, snow, rock and water are located around the area.  Lahars can pretty much destroy anything in its path, so seeing what a lahar could potentially pick up along the way will help us assess what type of damage may occur and how it will impact people vulnerable to it.  Lahars are represented with a dark brown color and it shows it flowing into valleys first hitting snow and rock and ending up in dense woodlands.

These two maps show Mt. St. Helens before and after the volcano erupted. The top of the hill in the after map looks as though the top of the hill was blown off and part of the side was as well.

This map shows Mt. St. Helens total volume loss after the eruption and also what areas gained volume.  The loss is represented as the darker gray color, no change is shown as a bright blue color, and a gain of volume is showing in white, the red color represents the loss of volume in cubic meters.  You can see where most of the damage occurred on one side of the mountain and how the other side did not get damaged.  This damage could have been caused by pyroclastic flows, lava flows, air-fall tephra, and lahars just to name a few.

 This is a map I made in Mass Wastage lab showing 5 areas prone to landslide risk and their reasons why.  These 5 reasons are upland areas subject to seismic shaking, mountainous environments with high relative relief, severe land degradation, areas with high rainfall, and areas covered with thick deposits of fine grained materials.  Areas on the map with darker shades of red for example along the Appalachian Mountains are areas that are at high risk of landslides occurring and white areas shown in the map are areas that are not prone to and do not have frequent landslides.

Map showing elevation in slopes, darker colors represent higher elevation whereas lighter colors represent lower elevations.  Higher elevations are more prone to mass wastage events occurring.

Map showing areas susceptible to mass wastage events. Parcels in red represent high danger or risk level and ones in green represent a lower danger/risk level.

The next three maps show 100 year flood maps at different flood lines; 780 ft., 790 ft., and 800 ft. respectively.  In each map the Eau Claire river runs through and is represented by a pinkish color.  The flood spreads throughout the area and is shown by a different color; dark blue in 780 ft map, light blue in 790 ft. map, and light pink in 800 ft. map.

 

 

Aerial map of Eau Claire where black represents areas highly susceptible to flooding and areas in white areas not prone to flooding.  Areas in white show buildings on the upper campus of UWEC and in black the lower campus.



  Christmas colored map showing schools, emergency facilities, and medical facilities at risk of a tsunami in California.  Green dots represent these facilities and red represents population affected by the tsunami.

 

 

Map comparing populated areas and water depth during a flood.  Dark black areas are heavily populated areas and lighter less populated areas.  Darker red represents higher depths of water during the flood.  As you can see heavier populated areas were closer to coast and also had higher depths of water whereas areas that were less populated were farther away from the coast and had lower water depth.