Risk assessment and disaster reduction strategies for mountainous and meteorological hazards in Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Base on the characteristics of surficial hazards such as landslide, debris flow, flash flood and meteorological hazards such as drought and snow calamity in Tibetan Plateau, the hazard level was assessed by means of indexes selected from different types of hazards. Vulnerability assessment at regional scale was conducted specific to each type of the hazard according to the manner and extent of damage. A comprehensive risk assessment was achieved combining the result of hazard and vulnerability assessment. The risk map shows that the high risk regions (20.55% of overall area) are mainly located in the fringe of eastern and southern plateau, while the moderate risk regions (30.26% of overall area) are in the south-central, west-central and north-east areas including southern Tibet, northern Qinghai and northwestern Sichuan. And the low risk regions (37.64% of overall area) are mainly at central plateau including north-central Tibet and southwestern Qinghai. The northern and north-western plateau, including northern Tibet and southern Xinjiang (11.55% of overall area), are subject to minor risk. At last, strategies to resolve current deficiencies in disaster mitigation and prevention have been proposed.