Debris flow hazard defense magnitude assessment with numerical simulation

Abstract

Debris flow disasters are usually accompanied by serious loss of lives and properties. However, debris flows are also part of Earth's natural phenomenon, what is the reasonable budget to be spent on mitigation measures becomes an important issue on the budget allocation processes. This paper utilizes economic concept to propose a reasonable estimation of the hazard damage and the cost of proposed mitigation measures. The proposed method is composed of 4 steps, namely, delineating the area of the disaster with different return periods, itemizing the land use within those area, calculating the hazard lose using official values and computing the expected probable maximum lose with a probability distribution. The comparison between the assessment of hazard and the economic gains of any proposed mitigation measures can be used as a reference for future decision making process. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.