Vaud a laggard in mapping flood dangers
Swiss communes, January 2011 state of 10-year natural dangers mapping project, "floods" (source, federal environment office)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Landslides, falling rocks, avalanches and floods: the bulk of the work is done for some dangers, but not all in the 10-year Swiss project to carefully map risks for these natural dangers.
The project is scheduled to end by December 2011, but the federal government says some larger cantons, which have not been able to complete the work on time, will need until the end of 2013 to finish their work.
None of canton Vaud’s communes, for example, had completed their flood risk mapping by January 2011, when the federal map seen here was established to show the state of work.
Dark green indicates “available and integrated into the commune’s development plans” while light green means only “available”, yellow is “work en route”, orange “partly available”, red “not available” and gray “not necessary”.
The natural dangers mapping project is part of a larger environmental mapping project for Switzerland, with much of the information already available on an interactive map that can be accessed in English. Instructions for using it are available in French, German and Italian, but not English.
How to use the federal environmental maps
If you want details about your commune, for example, start by going to “search” at the top left, put in the name of your canton, then commune. Then select the “maps” tab next to the “search” one and tick boxes (but not all) you want to view for that area. Selecting Sion, which had a major earthquake several hundred years ago, then the maps for earthquakes, history and risks,
A series of floods and landslides in Asia have taken the lives of at least 100 people (figure updated Wednesday 6 October).
Most of the deaths occurred in Indonesia, where villages were struck by landslides resulting from days of torrential rains.
There have also been deaths reported in Vietnam, the Chinese island of Hainan where over 60,000 people had to be evacuated, and in West Papua where several provinces are isolated.
Additional details on: Yahoo news,
At least 40 people have died in landslides triggered by torrential rains in the Central American nation of Guatemala. A bus on the Inter-American Highway northwest of the capital was hit by a mudslide as it drove near Cumbre de Alaska 5 September, and then a second slide covered a hundred local people who were trying to rescue the victims.
In another incident, 12 people died when another bus was buried in a landslide. Emergency services report up to 12,000 people have been evacuated because of the rains in Guatemala. Many thousands more have been affected in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco.
Links to other sites: CNN, Reuters
Source: ITN News
Machu Picchu in 2009 (photo ©2009 Claude Vedovini)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland and the United Nations Development Programme will work with Peru to improve weather monitoring around the ancient Incan site of Machu Picchu, following a disastrous series of 40 mudslides due to heavy rains. The rains continue and the Cuzco department, where the site is located, was declared a disaster area Monday 1 February, by the regional president, Hugo Gonzales.
An estimated 25,000 people have been left homeless and another 37,000 have lost at least part of their property in the past two weeks. Some 4,000 tourists were airlifted out of the area last week, and Machu Picchu itself will be closed for at least two months while broken rail and road links are repaired.
