Become a member
The core of ecorisQ is made of its members. By joining ecorisQ you will expand your professional network and profit from transparent tools in the field of natural hazard risks. Being an ecorisQ member demonstrates that you are willing to increase the transparancy and reproducibility of natural hazard analyses and that you promote sustainable protection against natural hazards.
News
Landslide casualties above average in Switzerland in 2014
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In 2014, the number of people who died due to shallow landslides was above average in Switzerland. A landslide in Tiefencastel, on August the 13th, derailed a train and caused one casualty. Furthermore, on 5 November, a farm house standing approximately 150 m from the forest limit was buried by a landslide in the municipality of Curio (Canton Ticino) after days of very heavy rainfall. A woman and her daughter were killed. Later, on the 16th of November, the impact of a landslide caused the collapse of a 3-storey residential building in Davesco (Canton Ticino). Four people were injured and two were killed. More information on natural hazards in Switzerland in 2014 can be found on the website of the WSL in German, in French or in Italian.
Extension of Rockyfor3D
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Improvements in the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the 3D rockfall trajectory simulation software Rockyfor3D have been implemented on demand of the many users. The current version (Rockyfor3D v5.2.1) allows a “rapid automatic simulation”, which only requires a Digital Elevation Model as input. All parameters related to surface roughness and elasticity are calculated automatically, using pessimistic values. The new GUI also allows defining directly the form and the dimensions of the blocks to be simulated. Errors related to directory paths containing spaces have been fixed. The algorithms for calculating the rockfall kinematics have not been changed. All members can download Rockyfor3D v5.2.1 from the tools section of our website (after login).
Release of FINT
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We proudly present our new software for detecting trees in high resolution surface data, called FINT (Find INdividual Trees). The software is freely downloadable for all members from the tools section of our website. The tool FINT extracts positions of dominant and co-dominant trees from high resolution surface models (e.g., from LiDAR data) of forests. Since most users have access to raster data used in standard Geographical Information Systems (GIS) instead of 3D point data, FINT is based on the identification of local maxima in raster data. The principal aim of FINT is to obtain a realistic forest structure in the sense that the positions of the largest trees and the locations of the main gaps and couloirs in the forests are recorded and subsequently integrated in natural hazard process simulation models. FINT can be too imprecise for silvicultural analyses (e.g, estimation of stand density, basal area and standing volume), especially for broadleaved and mixed forests. An important variable determining the precision of the outcomes is the resolution of the input data. Therefore, a minimal resolution of 1 x 1 m is recommended. More information can be found here.
