Potential Contribution of Hazus-MH to Flood Risk Assessment in the Context of European Flood Directive Giedrius Kaveckis Supervisors: Gernot Paulus and Kevin Mickey School of Geoinformation Carinthia University of Applied Sciences The Polis Center Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
Structure Introduction European Flood Directive (EFD) Hazus-MH The main problem and solution Framework of flood damage assessment in Europe Requirements Free worldwide data use in Hazus Results Existing problems Conclusions Future research
Introduction Each year, floods cause severe damages, claim around 20,000 lives, and affect at least 20 million people worldwide; In 2007 October a European Flood Directive was signed by 27 European Member States; Hazus-MH proved its efficiency in many case studies in U.S.; Continue research based on Kulmesh s Master Thesis, Evaluation of a Hazus-MH Loss Estimation Methodology for a Natural Risk Management Case Study in Carinthia, Austria. Sources: Smith et al. 2009, European Flood Directive 2007
European Flood Directive (EFD) European Flood Directive was enacted by 27 EU Member States (2007 October); Aim of EFD is to manage and reduce flood risks; The EFD appoint three outputs as the requirements for each EU Member State: 2010.12.22 Today 2011.07.05 2012.12.22 2015.12.22 Timeline Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment Flood Hazard and Risk Maps Flood Risk Management Plans Source: European Flood Directive 2007
Hazus-MH (I) Hazus-MH is a free, powerful risk assessment software program for analyzing potential losses from floods, hurricane winds, and earthquakes; Released by FEMA* as ArcGIS extension; Originally designed to work only with U.S. datasets; Focus of this project on Flood Model; Supports exposure assessment of: FEMA 2004 (pp.14-16) * - FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency US) Sources: FEMA 2009a, 2004, pp.14-16
Hazus-MH (II) Hazus-MH Flood Model: Assesses direct damage to the buildings, facilities and aggregated building data by using flood hazard data; Generates summary of debris from aggregated building data; Calculates direct/indirect economic and social losses. Damage assessment: Depth Grid Point/aggregated data Damage function Sources: FEMA 2009a, pp.38
Overview and evaluation of flood hazard and flood risk mapping methods and best practice in Europe Analyzed more than 100 flood hazard and flood risk maps, methods of risk assessment and mapping from 20 European countries; Identified 5 flood hazard and 8 flood risk map types; Type of map Flood hazard map Map contents Flood extent/flood plain map Flood depth map Flood velocity and propagation map Flood danger map (hazard zoning map combination of flood extent and flood depth) Capability of Hazus-MH X X X Evaluated the requirements, use, scale issues, coloring schemes, and contents; Hazus can support EFD by preparing most of these maps. Flood risk map Flood event map (historical floods) Distribution of population Distribution of vulnerable groups Distribution of buildings Social vulnerability (shelter requirements and displaced population) Type of industry susceptibility to damage X X X X X Impact of damage on economy X Agriculture flooding X Various classifications for land-use The capabilities of Hazus-MH to create flood hazard and flood risk maps ( X = Hazus-MH is enable to create that type of map)
The main problem and solution (I) Originally Hazus works with U.S. datasets; The huge issue in Hazus is the study region territory of U.S.; U.S. administrative units (state, county, census tract, census block) do not fit into European standards; The implementation changes the study region and defines new administrative units based on NUTS (Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics), but the scale of NUTS level is not enough to perform efficient aggregated data analysis in Hazus; Even with the study region defined as Europe, the framework of Hazus analysis for site specific data remains almost unchanged; Now Hazus is capable of performing the flood hazard analysis in Europe if regression equations are provided.
The main problem and solution (II) Default Hazus-MH Now Geographical divisions USA: State County Census Tract Census Block EU: NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3 NUTS3 = County; Solution for study region create Census Tract and Census Block as a grid; Another problem no aggregated data for such divisions; NAD1983 inaccuracy vs WGS84 is 0.1 mm.
How was it done? The data relations and structure of the geographical divisions in Hazus were analyzed; Hazus Data Folder syboundary.mdb: systate sycounty sytract State Folder bndrygbs.mdb: hzcounty hztract hzcensusblock The same relations and data structure were defined to NUTS; The idea was implemented using MS Access and ArcMap editor; The original geographical Hazus features were deleted; The success of the implementation shows the possibility of integrating a worldwide study region. CountyFips CountyName State StateFips Tract6... INTEGRATION
Flood damage assessment in Europe using implementation 1. Use of mapping schemas for more precise damage assessment 4. Create (import) flood depth grid using Hazus (regression equations) or presented methodology 2. Integrate using standard Hazus tools 3. Select and create the region by name 6. Survey results 5. Run the analysis
Requirements for flood damage assessment in Europe using Hazus-MH Point or polygon building/facility data (can be as MS Excel sheets, MS Access database, or shape files); Flood depth grid or use Hazus to produce it (if regression equations are available); Hazus-MH software. Simple approach for small areas can be used to generate flood depth grid from DEM (tools provided as Arc Toolbox) and use it in Hazus-MH. The methodology uses flood water elevation and DEM. Source: Hazus Unit 3 Advanced Hazus Review Presentation
Point attribute data requirements for flood damage assessment in Hazus-MH Compulsory data fields: Point coordinates (x,y); Occupancy type (to assign different damage function); Building/facility value (if monetary loss is needed); Inventory value (if monetary loss is needed). Non-compulsory attributes (can be assigned by default, by mapping schemes, or set manually for each building): First floor height; Type of building (wood, steel, concrete etc.); Foundation type (basement, slab, crawl space, etc.); Damage function.
Integration of free worldwide open source data in Hazus-MH (I) Free ASTER 30-meter resolution worldwide digital elevation model; DEM acquisition website Rough flood depth grid and point building data with needed attributes can easily be generated from ASTER DEM and Open Street Map data using methodology presented in the master thesis; Result: a free flood damage assessment with adequate data quality in almost any part of the world.
Integration of free worldwide open source data in Hazus-MH (II) Open Street Map (OSM) free worldwide open source point and polygon building data. OSM data in Singapoure OSM data in Quantum GIS Acquire OSM data via browser as XML; Convert to shp using free GIS Tool (Quantum GIS); Use mapping scheme; Integrate into Hazus and do analysis. Great possibility for the communities to contribute local data; Well known as valuable data for Emergency Response in Haiti Earthquake 2010; Data contains building blueprints (polygons), points, and occupancy type; Mapping schemas can be defined for each region; Free, easy to handle and download, modify, and update; Can be integrated into Hazus as UDF or other site-specific data.
Results Implementation enables the Hazus-MH flood model to perform flood damage assessment to any point data in Europe (later- worldwide); The delivered outputs are: building/facility/inventory damages (in %) or loss (in monetary value) under specified flood hazard conditions (flood depth); Results can be visualized as maps, tables, or reports; NUTS were integrated into Hazus as study region; There are many ways to use the outputs (to create vulnerability, risk maps..). User Defined Facilities in Glan (Carinthia), the damage expressend in thousands of euros
Existing problems Lack of aggregated data with common data structure in European countries; The aggregated data is not efficient in flood risk assessment; Different vulnerability, distribution of population, buildings data schemes differ in each country; Hazus-MH Flood Model cannot assess damages to line layers (roads, rails, pipelines, etc.); Differences in metric system between Europe and U.S. (used in Hazus-MH); The technical problems limits the possibility to apply user defined damage functions for aggregated data.
Conclusions Hazus-MH is a well developed and documented risk assessment tool, which is still widely used for hazard mitigation in the U.S.; The existing implementation enables Hazus-MH to perform flood damage estimation for essential facilities, high potential loss facilities, lifelines (transport, utility) facilities, user defined facilities in any place in Europe; The adoption of European aggregated data in Hazus is still complicated while EU Member States do not have common standards. NUTS particularity is not enough; Open Street Map and ASTER DEM can be integrated as free available data into Hazus-MH using the framework and contribute EFD; Successful data integration of non-u.s. datasets into Hazus-MH leads to worldwide Hazus hurricane and earthquake damage and risk assessment.
Future Research Develop the schema to simplify the integration of European aggregated data; Create various mapping schemas for different European countries to handle more precise data integration; Develop more sophisticated methods to derive accurate flood hazard data; Search and evaluate the open source building data platforms which could supply with efficient data for flood and earthquake damage assessment; Develop the functionality of the UDF results by improving reports; Improve the methods to integrate non-u.s. datasets into Hazus hurricane and earthquake models;... Creation of the new earthquake scenario in Lithuania
References European Flood Directive 2007, Directive 2007/60/EC on the assessment and management of flood risks, European Commission, FEMA 2004, Using Hazus-MH for Risk Assessment (How-To Guide), Hazus-MH Risk Assessment and User Group Series, Department of Homeland Security, FEMA Mitigation Division, Washington, D.C.; FEMA 2009a, Hazus-MH MR4 Flood Model Technical Manual, Department of Homeland Security, FEMA Mitigation Division, Washington, D.C.; FEMA 2009b, Unit 4 Hazus Riverine Flood Loss Estimation Analysis, Presentation; Smith, K. And Petley, D.N. (2009), Environmental Hazards Assessing risk and reducing disaster, New York, Routhledge.
The biggest thing missing is anything about how do we plan our growth and development to avoid catastrophes in the future? Bill Newton Thank You Questions, comments & complains: Giedrius Kaveckis: giedriuskav@gmail.com, Giedrius.KAVECKIS@edu.fh-kaernten.ac.at or giedkave@iupui.edu Gernot Paulus: G.Paulus@fh-kaernten.at Kevin Mickey: kmickey@iupui.edu