TY - JOUR A1 - Meyer, Nele Kristin A1 - Schwanghart, Wolfgang A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Romstad, Bard A1 - Etzelmuller, Bernd T1 - Estimating the topographic predictability of debris flows JF - Geomorphology : an international journal on pure and applied geomorphology N2 - The Norwegian traffic network is impacted by about 2000 landslides, avalanches, and debris flows each year that incur high economic losses. Despite the urgent need to mitigate future losses, efforts to locate potential debris flow source areas have been rare at the regional scale. We tackle this research gap by exploring a minimal set of possible topographic predictors of debris flow initiation that we input to a Weights-of-Evidence (WofE) model for mapping the regional susceptibility to debris flows in western Norway. We use an inventory of 429 debris flows that were recorded between 1979 and 2008, and use the terrain variables of slope, total curvature, and contributing area (flow accumulation) to compute the posterior probabilities of local debris flow occurrence. The novelty of our approach is that we quantify the uncertainties in the WofE approach arising from different predictor classification schemes and data input, while estimating model accuracy and predictive performance from independent test data. Our results show that a percentile-based classification scheme excels over a manual classification of the predictor variables because differing abundances in manually defined bins reduce the reliability of the conditional independence tests, a key, and often neglected, prerequisite for the WofE method. The conditional dependence between total curvature and flow accumulation precludes their joint use in the model. Slope gradient has the highest true positive rate (88%), although the fraction of area classified as susceptible is very large (37%). The predictive performance, i.e. the reduction of false positives, is improved when combined with either total curvature or flow accumulation. Bootstrapping shows that the combination of slope and flow accumulation provides more reliable predictions than the combination of slope and total curvature, and helps refining the use of slope-area plots for identifying morphometric fingerprints of debris flow source areas, an approach used outside the field of landslide susceptibility assessments. KW - Weights-of-Evidence KW - Debris flows KW - Susceptibility KW - Slope-area plot KW - Process domains KW - Norway Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2013.10.030 SN - 0169-555X SN - 1872-695X VL - 207 SP - 114 EP - 125 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Meyer, Nele Kristin A1 - Schwanghart, Wolfgang A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Nadim, F. T1 - Roads at risk BT - traffic detours from debris flows in southern Norway T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Globalisation and interregional exchange of people, goods, and services has boosted the importance of and reliance on all kinds of transport networks. The linear structure of road networks is especially sensitive to natural hazards. In southern Norway, steep topography and extreme weather events promote frequent traffic disruption caused by debris flows. Topographic susceptibility and trigger frequency maps serve as input into a hazard appraisal at the scale of first-order catchments to quantify the impact of debris flows on the road network in terms of a failure likelihood of each link connecting two network vertices, e.g. road junctions. We compute total additional traffic loads as a function of traffic volume and excess distance, i.e. the extra length of an alternative path connecting two previously disrupted network vertices using a shortest-path algorithm. Our risk metric of link failure is the total additional annual traffic load, expressed as vehicle kilometres, because of debris-flow-related road closures. We present two scenarios demonstrating the impact of debris flows on the road network and quantify the associated path-failure likelihood between major cities in southern Norway. The scenarios indicate that major routes crossing the central and north-western part of the study area are associated with high link-failure risk. Yet options for detours on major routes are manifold and incur only little additional costs provided that drivers are sufficiently well informed about road closures. Our risk estimates may be of importance to road network managers and transport companies relying on speedy delivery of services and goods. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 519 KW - network vulnerability Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-409586 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 519 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meyer, Nele Kristin A1 - Schwanghart, Wolfgang A1 - Korup, Oliver A1 - Nadim, F. T1 - Roads at risk BT - traffic detours from debris flows in southern Norway JF - Natural hazards and earth system sciences N2 - Globalisation and interregional exchange of people, goods, and services has boosted the importance of and reliance on all kinds of transport networks. The linear structure of road networks is especially sensitive to natural hazards. In southern Norway, steep topography and extreme weather events promote frequent traffic disruption caused by debris flows. Topographic susceptibility and trigger frequency maps serve as input into a hazard appraisal at the scale of first-order catchments to quantify the impact of debris flows on the road network in terms of a failure likelihood of each link connecting two network vertices, e.g. road junctions. We compute total additional traffic loads as a function of traffic volume and excess distance, i.e. the extra length of an alternative path connecting two previously disrupted network vertices using a shortest-path algorithm. Our risk metric of link failure is the total additional annual traffic load, expressed as vehicle kilometres, because of debris-flow-related road closures. We present two scenarios demonstrating the impact of debris flows on the road network and quantify the associated path-failure likelihood between major cities in southern Norway. The scenarios indicate that major routes crossing the central and north-western part of the study area are associated with high link-failure risk. Yet options for detours on major routes are manifold and incur only little additional costs provided that drivers are sufficiently well informed about road closures. Our risk estimates may be of importance to road network managers and transport companies relying on speedy delivery of services and goods. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-15-985-2015 SN - 1561-8633 VL - 15 IS - 5 SP - 985 EP - 995 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER -