Superposed Natural Hazards and Pandemics: Breaking Dams, Floods, and COVID-19

Mohammad Amin Hariri-Ardebili and Upmanu Lall
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Mohammad Amin Hariri-Ardebili: Department of Civil Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
Upmanu Lall: Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 16, 1-27

Abstract: Within the engineering domain, safety issues are often related to engineering design and typically exclude factors such as epidemics, famine, and disease. This article provides a perspective on the reciprocal relationship and interaction between a natural hazard and a simultaneous pandemic outbreak and discusses how a catastrophic dam break, combined with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, poses a risk to human life. The paper uses grey- and peer-reviewed literature to support the discussion and reviews fundamentals of dam safety management, potential loss of life due to a dam break, and the recent evolution in dam risk analysis to account for the COVID-19 outbreak. Conventional risk reduction recommendations, such as quick evacuation and sheltering in communal centers, are revisited in the presence of a pandemic when social distancing is recommended. This perspective manuscript aims to provide insight into the multi-hazard risk problem resulting from a concurring natural hazard and global pandemic.

Keywords: natural hazard; pandemic; dam break; flood; risk management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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