Using high-resolution lidar data to evaluate natural hazards and risk in Oregon
Abstract
Since 2007, the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) has been collecting large areas of high resolution lidar area in Oregon for a wide range of applications. One of DOGAMI's most important uses of the data is to map and model natural hazards, and to evaluate the risk posed by those hazards. Lidar data allow for more accurate, comprehensive and affordable mapping and modeling of hazards, and lidar derived inventories of structures allow more accurate and comprehensive estimates of risk. DOGAMI has applied this combination of enhanced hazard and risk assessment to volcano hazards, landslides and debris flow hazards, earthquake hazards, flood and channel migration hazards and coastal erosion and tsunami hazards. For volcano hazards lidar provides accurate topography for lahar inundation models. For landslides, lidar is the definitive tool for mapping existing landslides and debris flow deposits, and lidar topography essential for accurate modeling of susceptibility. Lidar imagery has identified dozens of previously unknown Quaternary fault scarps in Oregon, although virtually none of the data collection has targeted fault hazards. Lidar topography is essential for modeling flood flows and for delineating flood zones accurately, and can be used as a base for registration of historical photography to map channel migration, and to identify areas of potential avulsion in the modern floodplain. Serial lidar can quantify coastal change, and detailed and accurate topography provide a base for mapping coastal landforms that control erosion rates and processes. Lidar-derived topography provides the basis for the terrestrial portions of the high resolution numerical models of tsunami propagation and inundation that DOGAMI has prepared for the entire Oregon coast. These hazard studies are coupled with detailed and accurate risk and exposure analysis based on building footprint and infrastructure mapping based on lidar. This allows us an accurate and comprehensive view of the spatial relations between hazards and structures, providing more complete and reliable risk assessments.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMNH21C..04M
- Keywords:
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- 4337 NATURAL HAZARDS Remote sensing and disasters;
- 4302 NATURAL HAZARDS Geological;
- 4328 NATURAL HAZARDS Risk;
- 4344 NATURAL HAZARDS Microzonation and macrozonation