Pakistan is a developing nation that has historically been subjected to high flooding fatality events due to its socioeconomic characteristics, population geography, and landscape attributes. Flooding in Pakistan has historically resulted from heavy rain events or periodic landfalling tropical cyclones that have afflicted the nation throughout its history. This study aggregates flooding events in Pakistan over a 62‐year period to identify peak years and seasonal cycles of when flood‐related fatalities have historically been highest in the nation. Seasonally, Pakistan is especially prone to flood disasters during the summer monsoon months, and also during the months of November and December, when tropical cyclone activity periodically impacts the nation. Some of the earlier flooding events have not been well documented with respect to specific months or dates of occurrence, and have therefore been excluded from the seasonal analysis portion of the study. Over the past 60 years, exceptionally high numbers of flood‐related fatalities occurred in the years 1950, 1965, and 2010; peak fatality flood years are mostly attributed to single catastrophic events caused primarily by large‐scale river floods or landfalling tropical cyclones.
Most U.S. metropolitan regions have experienced urban ''sprawl,'' or the outward spreading of urban development from city centers. For cities lying in areas prone to severe weather, the sprawl phenomenon exposes greater numbers of developed areas and inhabitants to a variety of thunderstorm hazards. This study's principal goal is to determine how urbanization growth patterns affect a region's vulnerability to severe weather events. To assess how sprawl may impact vulnerability to tornadoes, hail, and convective wind events, an analysis examining potential loss may be utilized. This study employs two distinct approaches to examine how the Atlanta area's rapid and extensive development during the latter half of the twentieth Century has affected its overall potential exposure to thunderstorm hazards. First, archived census data are used to estimate overall impacts from hypothetical significant tornado, nontornadic convective wind, and hail events occurring at different time periods throughout several locations in the Atlanta metropolitan region. Second, economic factors are integrated into the analysis, which assists in determining how these hypothetical severe event scenarios may have changed from a cost standpoint if they were to occur in 2006 as opposed to 1960.
Historic severe thunderstorm hazard reports consist of spatial and temporal disparities in reporting frequencies, which are attributed partially to changes in assessment and reporting techniques witnessed throughout the U.S. over the years. Population bias, however, has been cited as a key underlying factor creating inhomogeneities in severe weather reporting frequencies in the past. Given the nature of the historic population distribution patterns found throughout the Atlanta, GA metropolitan region, this location serves as a focus to determine potential statistical associations that may exist between population numbers and historic severe weather hazard reporting frequencies. To address this potential association, statistical one-way ANOVA, post-hoc and correlation tests are conducted for this study. Results indicate that Atlanta-area severe wind and hail reporting frequency patterns display some significant associations with respect to the region's historic population patterns. Tornado reporting frequencies conversely display the weakest statistical associations, and are least affected by the area's human settlement patterns since 1960.
Two independent datasets (total n = 959) of tornado-stricken passenger vehicles collected from 12 tornado events over a 15-yr time span are combined and tested to determine whether vehicle movement and/or upset are consistent at various wind speed intensities. Impacted vehicles are classified into three categories of upset motions (no movement, lateral shifting, rolling and lofting motions) for each wind intensity category of the Fujita and Enhanced Fujita scales. Vehicles observed by Schmidlin exposed to F1 and F2 winds are statistically assessed to determine if upset distribution values are consistent with those assessed by Marshall at these respective wind speeds; this same approach is subsequently conducted for vehicles at F3/EF3 and F4/EF4 winds. No statistical differences are found between the two sets of field survey data, which are therefore considered to be of the same population. Passenger vehicles are currently not utilized as damage indicators for rating tornado wind intensities, although the results of this study suggest that only 10% of vehicles are typically shifted at EF0 wind speeds, 36% are displaced at EF1 and EF2 winds (5% are rolled or lofted), 63% are displaced at EF3 and EF4 winds (15% are rolled and lofted), and all vehicles exhibit some form of movement or upset at the EF5 wind speed. The results of this study may potentially serve as a basis for providing better tornado safety protocols, designing safer vehicles and infrastructure, and estimating tornado wind speeds where few EF-scale damage indicators are available.
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