Typhoon/hurricane/tropical cyclone disasters: Prediction, prevention and mitigation

Abstract

As the World Meteorological Organization estimates that about 90 percent of all natural disasters are extreme meteorological hazards like typhoon, hurricane and tropical cyclone triggered disasters. Typhoon-induced disaster is one of the most important factors influencing the economic development and more than 250 million people in China. In view of the existing extreme statistical theory can not satisfy typhoon disaster prediction, during the past 30 years research activities we derived Compound Extreme Value Distribution (CEVD) by compounding a discrete distribution (typhoon occurrence frequency) and the extreme distribution for typhoon induced disaster events as following types: • Poisson-Gumbel CEVD for typhoon induced extreme wave prediction was widly used for coastal structures design and accepted in 2008 "China Code for Sea Port Hydrology" instead of Pearson type 3; • Poisson-Weibull CEVD was used for hurricane prediction along US Atlantic and Gulf of Mexic coasts, 2005 hurricane Katrina disaster proved that our 1982 predicted results in disaster area more reasonable than NOAA proposed SPH and PMH ; • CEVD developed into Multivariate Compound Extreme Value Distribution (MCEVD) and used for different offshore, coastal and hydraulic engineering. • Multi-objective triple layer probability model based on the MCEVD as follows: • The first layer is typhoon characteristics. They are described as maximum central pressure difference (ΔP), radius of maximum wind speed (Rmax), moving speed of typhoon center (s), minimum distance between typhoon center and target site (δ), and typhoon moving angle (θ). But the annual typhoon/ hurricane frequency (λ) is also different for certain sea area. Typhoon duration from landfall to dissipation (t) is also considered as one of typhoon characteristics in the prediction model. For the analysis procedure of multivariate joint probability which combines a kind of discrete distribution (λ) and six kinds of continues distributions (ΔP, Rmax, s, δ, θ, t), the stochastic simulation technique based on the theory of MCEVD is a valid way to solve such problem. • The second layer is joint probability prediction of different combinations of typhoon characteristics triggered wave, surge, wind, rainfall, flood, current combinations by MCEVD. • The third layer: Joint probability safety assessment for different kind defense structures with certain dominated extreme external event. Our proposed MCEVD theory and Multi-objective triple layer probability model widely used for more than 40 engineering projects , such as coastal defense against typhoon attacks for Nuclear Power Plants, risk assessment for estuarine city Shanghai and hydraulic structures for Olympiad Sailing Regatta, flood prediction of Three Gorges Dam Project and design codes calibration (API, IAEA and China Design Codes) for offshore, coastal and hydraulic structures. © 2013 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.