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| Titel |
Damaging events along roads during bad weather periods: a case study in Calabria (Italy) |
| VerfasserIn |
O. Petrucci, A. A. Pasqua |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1561-8633
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Natural Hazards and Earth System Science ; 12, no. 2 ; Nr. 12, no. 2 (2012-02-17), S.365-378 |
| Datensatznummer |
250010504
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/nhess-12-365-2012.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
The study focuses on circumstances that affect people during periods of bad
weather conditions characterised by winds, rainfall, landslides, flooding,
and storm surges. A methodological approach and its application to a study
area in southern Italy are presented here. A 10-yr database was
generated by mining data from a newspaper. Damaging agents were sorted into
five types: flood, urban flooding, landslide, wind, and storm surge.
Damage to people occurred in 126 cases, causing
13 victims, 129 injured and about 782 people involved but not injured.
For cases of floods, urban flooding and landslides, the analysis does not
highlight straightforward relationships between rainfall and damage to
people, even if the events showed different features according to the months
of occurrence. The events occurring between May and October were
characterised by concentrated and intense rainfall, and between May and
July, the highest values of hourly (103 mm on the average) and monthly
rainfall (114 mm on the average) were recorded. Urban flooding and flash
floods were the most common damaging agents: injured, involved people and
more rarely, cases with victims were reported.
Between November and April, the highest number of events was recorded.
Rainfall presented longer durations and hourly and sub-hourly rainfall were
lower than those recorded between May and October. Landslides were the most
frequent damaging agents but the highest number of cases with victims, which
occurred between November and January, were mainly related to floods and
urban flooding.
Motorists represent the totality of the victims; 84% of the people were
injured and the whole of people involved. All victims were men, and the
average age was 43 yr. The primary cause of death was drowning caused by
floods, and the second was trauma suffered in car accidents caused by urban
flooding. The high number of motorists rescued in submerged cars reveals an
underestimation of danger in the case of floods, often increased by the
sense of security related to the familiarity of the road. In contrast, in
the cases of people involved in landslides, when there was enough time to
realise the potential risk, people behaved appropriately to avoid negative
consequences. Of the victims, 50% were killed along fast-flowing roads;
this may be related to the high speed limit in force on these roads, as a
car's speed reduces the reaction time of a driver's response to an
unexpected situation, whatever the damaging agent is. These results can be
used in local information/education campaigns to both increase risk
awareness and promote self-protective behaviours.
Moreover, the mapping of damaging effects pointed out the regional sectors
in which the high frequency of the events suggests further planning of in-depth
examinations, which can individuate the critical points and local regulator
interventions that might change damage incidences in the future. |
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