News

Following the success of the first international conference on Extreme Value Analysis and Application to Natural Hazards (EVAN) in Siegen, Germany in 2013 and the second conference in Santander, Spain in 2015, we are pleased to announce the dates of the third conference to take place in Southampton, UK.

The conference will take place from Tuesday 12 to Thursday 14 September 2017 at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. The overall aim of the conference is to bring together and promote interchange between a diverse community of research scientists, students, practitioners and stakeholders concerned with the complex and inter-disciplinary topic of analyzing, understanding and predicting natural hazard events. For further information about the conference please see our web-site <https://evan2017.wordpress.com/>.

A practical hackathon will also follow the conference on Friday 15 September that will provide a chance to share and analyse real data to determine new statistical techniques and workflows to better quantify frequency, magnitude and consequence. Get in touch with Mike Clare (m.clare@noc.ac.uk) if you are interested to know more. 

To receive updates about the conference please sign up to the newsletter by clicking here<http://eepurl.com/cfcvrP>. 

The Natural Hazards Partnership, established in 2011, provides authoritative and consistent information, research and analysis on natural hazards for the development of more effective policies, communications and services for civil contingencies, governments and the responder community across the UK.

An updated website has just gone live and includes a number of resources about natural hazards posed to the UK - http://www.naturalhazardspartnership.org.uk/ 

The NHP states that: "Our challenge is to broaden the focus of natural hazards risk management from what has been predominately an early warning system towards a more holistic and integrated approach, encompassing more emphasis on risk reduction and prevention. We are already gaining international recognition as world leading. Initial findings from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction facilitated peer review of the UK's approach to resilience, highlighted the Natural Hazards Partnership as a model "other nations may wish to adopt". Furthermore, influential organisations, such as the European Centre's Joint Research Centre, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Health Organisation and World Meteorological Organisation are acknowledging the role of the Natural Hazards Partnership and the importance of its work."

Now the emergency response community in the UK have access to a new, fully accredited and secure information-sharing platform called ResilienceDirect™, underpinned by OS location data provided under the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA).

The Natural Hazards Partnership is already gaining international recognition as world leading. Initial findings from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction facilitated peer review of the UK's approach to resilience, highlighted the NHP as a model "other nations may wish to adopt". Furthermore, influential organisations, such as the EC's Joint Research Centre, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization are acknowledging the role of the NHP and the importance of its work.

Rivers and subaqueous flows of sediment known as turbidity currents, are the two most important sediment transport processes by volume on Earth. These processes pose hazards to a wide range of seafloor and coastal infrastructure. Various hypotheses have been proposed for triggering of turbidity currents offshore from river mouths, including direct plunging of river discharge, delta mouth bar flushing or slope failure caused by low tides and gas expansion, earthquakes and rapid sedimentation. During 2011, 106 turbidity currents were monitored at Squamish Delta, British Columbia. This enabled statistical analysis of timing, frequency and triggers. The largest peaks in river discharge did not create hyperpycnal flows. Instead, delayed delta-lip failures occurred 8–11 hours after flood peaks, due to cumulative delta top sedimentation and tidally-induced pore pressure changes. Elevated river discharge is thus a significant control on the timing and rate of turbidity currents but not directly due to plunging river water. Elevated river discharge and focusing of river discharge at low tides cause increased sediment transport across the delta-lip, which is the most significant of all controls on flow timing in this setting.

We have just published the findings of this study in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, which has relevance for a range of seafloor infrastructure that may be installed in fjords, such as telecommunication cables, oil and gas pipelines. The study is also important for coastal infrastructure, as subaqueous landslide-triggered tsunamis can be damaging, and have caused loss of life in the past. The paper can be found here and the full reference is: Clare, M. A., Clarke, J. H., Talling, P. J., Cartigny, M. J. B., & Pratomo, D. G. (2016). Preconditioning and triggering of offshore slope failures and turbidity currents revealed by most detailed monitoring yet at a fjord-head delta. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 450, 208-220.

Below: (A) Previous hypotheses for triggering of slope failures and turbidity currents at fjord-head deltas with bedload-dominated rivers. (B) Water depth and slope angles based on Squamish delta slope.

A successful collaborative workshop was held on 27th June 2016 at NOC Southampton to discuss new research into hazards for marine infrasrtucture. The 50 attendees included 23 representatives from 13 different companies with a specific interest in better understanding the risks to seafloor structures such as oil and gas pipelines, and telecommunications cables. Academic representatives presented new results from cutting edge experiments, field studies and numerical modelling, including representation from NOC, University of Southampton, Leeds University, Bangor University, Kings College London and Imperial College. Industry representatives from East Point GEO, D'Appolonia and Geotek outlined the present industry state of the art in geohazard assessment, in partiuclar highlighting some of the challenges posed in deepwater areas. This workshop provided a great opportunity for new collaborations between industry organisations that tackle real-world issues for seafloor infrastructure, and academics who are focused on quantifying marine processes including submarine slope failures and turbidity currents.

(Below) Professor Peter Talling discusses future collaborative research directions into deep water geohazards