Prevention/mitigation of natural disasters in urban areas

Preventing/mitigating natural disasters in urban areas can indirectly be part of the 17 sustainable economic and social development intentions according to the United Nations in 2015. Four types of natural disasters—flooding, heavy rain-induced slope failures/landslides; earthquakes causing structure failure/collapse, and land subsidence—are briefly considered in this article. With the increased frequency of climate change-induced extreme weathers, the numbers of flooding and heavy rain-induced slope failures/landslides in urban areas has increased in recent years. There are both engineering methods to prevent their occurrence, and more effectively early prediction and warning systems to mitigate the resulting damage. However, earthquakes still cannot be predicted to an extent that is sufficient to avoid damage, and developing and adopting structures that are resilient against earthquakes, that is, structures featuring earthquake resistance, vibration damping, and seismic isolation, are essential tasks for sustainable city development. Land subsidence results from human activity, and is mainly due to excessive pumping of groundwater, which is a “natural” disaster caused by human activity. Countermeasures include effective regional and/or national freshwater management and local water recycling to avoid excessive pumping the groundwater. Finally, perspectives for risk warning and hazard prevention through enhanced field monitoring, risk assessment with multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), and artificial intelligence (AI) technology.