Methodology for Assessment of Natural Hazard Vulnerability in U.s. Coastal Zone Using Remote Sensing

Coastal hazard events can significantly affect or even alter the natural environment. Their impacts are generally not considered to be “disastrous” unless they involve damages to human populations and infrastructure. When people and property are not present, hazards are merely natural processes that alter the environment. When people and property is present then the impacts of hazards are viewed quite differently. The primary focus is no longer on the natural processes associated with a major hazard event, but instead on the disastrous results that can be measured by lives lost, property damages, and economic and environmental impacts.



U.S. coastal counties possess economic gain through natural resources, maritime trade and commerce and economic loss through natural hazards, overexploitation and exponential population growth.

About 80 percent of the losses were by meteorological events and 10 percent were by earthquakes and volcanoes. Hence in order to minimize the loss due to natural hazard a computer based geospatial database methodology is adopted for natural hazards information retrieval and to provide national risk assessment data to the state and local governments.

Site specific models were proposed for U.S. coastal zone by integrating GIS software and high-resolution remote sensing to quantify the large-scale risk and vulnerability. This modeling study could also be applied to developing countries such as India, Pakistan, Srilanka etc. for the natural hazard vulnerability assessment in their coastal zones.

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