Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Risk Analysis
A 10,000-Year Global Stochastic Tropical Cyclone Catalog with Wind-Dependent Track Transitions (WHITS)
Published: 2026-05-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Risk Analysis
Reliable assessment of tropical cyclone (TC) risk is limited by the brevity and spatial sparsity of the historical record, particularly for the rare, high-intensity landfalls that dominate insured loss. We present WHITS (Wind-focused Hurricane Interactive Track Simulator), a non-parametric semi-Markov track generator that extends the HITS framework of Nakamura et al. (2015) in three ways: [...]
Simulation-Based Sensitivity Analysis of Check-Dam Height Effects on Downstream Debris-Flow Depth for Structural Countermeasure Scenarios
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Other Engineering, Risk Analysis
Check dams can influence debris-flow propagation, but their effects may depend on location, height, and local topographic conditions. This study evaluates the sensitivity of downstream debris-flow depth to check-dam height scenarios using numerical simulations of a mountainous catchment in Atami, Japan. Six hypothetical check-dam locations were placed along the torrent, and 4,877 valid cases were [...]
The Role of Humidity in Past and Future Fire Weather Trends in the Contiguous United States
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Other Earth Sciences, Risk Analysis
There has been evidence of increasing fire activity in the United States since approximately the 1980s, now estimated to cause tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of damage per year. Weather is one of the key drivers of fire activity, with hot, dry, and windy weather commonly associated with high-risk conditions. We are still, however, developing an understanding of how these weather [...]
Towards Prospective Disaster Risk Management: Mapping Multi-hazard Urban Risk Dynamics Driven by Evolving Exposure and Vulnerability via Earth Observation
Published: 2026-04-30
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Human Geography, Other Computer Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Risk Analysis, Spatial Science, Structural Engineering
As local governments increasingly adopt geospatial Climate and Disaster Risk Assessment (CDRA) to inform prospective public policy, the reliability of existing static risk intelligence is challenged by the continuous evolution of building exposure, population distribution, and physical vulnerability. Recent multi-temporal datasets of the built environment, derived from Earth Observation and [...]
Stress testing insurance market stability under climate risk
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Risk Analysis
Climate change, urban development, and evolving insurance markets threaten the stability of disaster-risk financing. Homeowners insurance is embedded in a layered network of reinsurers, capital markets, and public backstops that absorb losses and can be overwhelmed by extreme events. We develop a probabilistic risk-propagation model linking physics-based simulations of tropical cyclone wind and [...]
From Impact Chains to Decision-Support: Designing CRISP, a Climate Risk Planning Tool for Agri-Food Systems
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Risk Analysis
Systematically integrating climate risk considerations into development planning remains a persistent challenge, particularly where a lot of information needs to be gathered and practical, accessible tools and databases are lacking. Existing climate risk assessment approaches are often complex, resource-intensive, or not designed for specific sectoral contexts. To address this gap, the Climate [...]
Spatial-Temporal Assessment of Natural Disaster Losses Using Comb- ined AHP-Entropy Weight Method: A Case Study of Jiangxi Province
Published: 2026-03-29
Subjects: Risk Analysis
The Disaster Situation Index (DSI) serves as a crucial method for natural disaster loss assessment. However, the weight determination in existing assessment practices is characterized by strong subjectivity and methodological singularity, while the classification of DSI also suffers from artificial subjective arbitrariness. To resolve these two issues, this study proposes a hybrid approach [...]
Robust Uneven Shift of Extreme Storm Surges Observed in Data Sparse Northeast Indian Ocean Cities
Published: 2026-03-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Reanalysis-driven storm surge datasets enable extreme analysis in data-sparse regions, but most studies translate these time series into extremes using a single statistical model, leaving model-selection uncertainty unquantified. In this study, we analyze ERA5-forced surge residual dataset (1950–2024) from Copernicus Climate Change Service for 11 Northeast Indian Ocean (NIO) cities using an [...]
Frictional weakening in the highly mobile 2025 Blatten (Switzerland) rock–ice avalanche
Published: 2026-03-17
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Dynamics and Dynamical Systems, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Geotechnical Engineering, Multivariate Analysis, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Risk Analysis
Cascading slope failures in alpine environments are intensifying as glaciers retreat and slope stability adjusts to a warming climate. Yet, the mechanisms governing such large, rapidly evolving events remain poorly understood. The 28 May 2025 rock–ice avalanche from Birch Glacier, Switzerland ($\approx9.3\times10^{6}~\mathrm{m^3}$), which devastated part of the village of Blatten, provides a [...]
HIGH-RESOLUTION DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL FOR THE ITALIAN TERRITORY
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
High-resolution digital terrain models are essential for environmental planning and territorial analyses, and provide foundations for geomorphological and hydrological applications, including flood and landslide modelling and geo-hydrological hazard and risk assessments. In Italy, airborne LiDAR surveys have improved the representation of terrain morphology in the last decade, but their coverage [...]
Governing Generative AI in Disaster Risk Management
Published: 2026-02-25
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Risk Analysis
The increasing frequency and severity of climate-related disasters, as well as scarcity of resources to counter them, highlight the urgent need for advanced tools in assessing and managing natural hazards. Recent developments in generative artificial intelligence offer new avenues to enhance disaster risk management. Among these advancements, large language models (LLMs) hold potential for [...]
Diurnal asymmetry in heat stress intensification across Bangladesh, 1985–2024: Accelerated nighttime warming and emerging urban risk
Published: 2026-02-06
Subjects: Risk Analysis
Bangladesh’s rapidly growing cities are becoming hotter, but how heat stress is changing over the day–night cycle has remained unclear. Using 40 years (1985–2024) of hourly Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) data from ERA5-HEAT, we examined long-term changes in physiologically relevant heat stress across Bangladesh and its major cities. Results show a clear day–night imbalance in warming: [...]
Spontaneous liquefaction in saturated granular deposits: State controlled boundary and surface reconfiguration
Published: 2026-01-26
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Science and Materials, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Mechanics of Materials, Mining Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis
In the case of water-saturated, granular deposits that are at risk of liquefaction, engineers need reliable information about the spatial extent of soil deformation in the event of liquefaction. It is not so important for them to know the exact location of the first failure. However, existing anal-yses primarily deal with the triggering of liquefaction and offer only limited information on how [...]
Global potential of integrated biorefineries for leaf protein and sugar: Producing sustainable food and preventing starvation in catastrophes
Published: 2026-01-07
Subjects: Agriculture, Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Food Science, Risk Analysis
To accommodate population growth and shifting diets, the global protein supply must increase. Simultaneously, rising climate variability increases agricultural yield shocks, disrupting conventional crops. Worse, global catastrophes such as nuclear war or pandemics could collapse the global food system. Here, we turn to the potential of grasslands and plentiful legume biomass (e.g., alfalfa, [...]
Climate Network Analysis of Precipitation Regimes from WorldClim Data in Saudi Arabia
Published: 2025-12-12
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Risk Analysis
Saudi Arabia is shaped by a hydroclimatic gradient, from the hyper-arid Rub’ al-Khali desert to the semi-arid mountains in the southwest. This gradient affects runoff generation, groundwater recharge, and drought risk, yet most studies still summarize rainfall using basic statistics from station data or gridded products. This research applies climate network analysis to identify coherent rainfall [...]