Strategy for assessment of disaster risk using typhoon hazards modeling based on chlorophyll-a content of seawater

Abstract

Abstract With deterioration of the global climate situation, the frequency and uncertainty of typhoons are the major causes of their hazards in tropical coastal regions, both in terms of loss of life and economic damage. Heavy rainfall triggers massive landslides and devastating flash floods, which can entail tremendous damage. In typhoon-affected areas, the key issue is to estimate the disaster zone and to help ships avoid disaster areas in the sea. Existing studies on typhoon disasters are mainly based on the overall wind assessment or the route prediction of the typhoon, with less attention to the detailed impact in different regions along the route. We propose in this paper a new framework to assess regional disaster risk based on chlorophyll-a concentration inversion in seawater. To calculate the concentration of chlorophyll-a, we analyze Landsat-8 satellite images in typhoon weather and normal weather in the same area. The experiments on realistic samples show that our approach has major potential to improve safety via assessing the impact of a typhoon in different regions based on the level of chlorophyll-a concentration.

Keywords

• Typhoon hazards
• Regional disaster risk
• Chlorophyll-a concentration
• Landsat-8 satellite images