Assessing potential risk of glacier avalanches to hydropower infrastructure in the Himalayan region

Sourav Laha (), Ulfat Majeed, Argha Banerjee, Irfan Rashid, Jakob Steiner () and Saurabh Vijay
Additional contact information
Sourav Laha: National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), Ministry of Earth Sciences
Ulfat Majeed: University of Kashmir
Argha Banerjee: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER)
Irfan Rashid: University of Kashmir
Jakob Steiner: University of Graz
Saurabh Vijay: Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2024, vol. 120, issue 5, No 30, 4749-4774

Abstract: Abstract A number of recent flash floods and debris flows, which were triggered by glacier avalanches from relatively small but steep hanging glaciers have exposed the vulnerability of infrastructures and livelihoods in the high Himalaya. As of now, there are no methods to identify potentially dangerous hanging glaciers in a catchment, and to assess the associated risk to any infrastructure. In this study, we propose a simple physics-based, probabilistic method to provide a first-order solution to this problem. It is based on considering a large number of hypothetical glacier avalanches and associated flood events within a numerically-efficient Monte-Carlo framework. We assign probability weights to the chain of events involved in any flood reaching a given dam location. To assess the relative risk, we test the method in three Himalayan catchments, including two where glacier avalanche events have been reported in the recent past. The proposed method is based on a series of simplifying assumptions regarding the initiation and propagation of the events, necessitated by the complexity of the processes involved and a lack of data in these remote environments. Our method performs reasonably well in two of the studied Himalayan catchments, while limitations in the performance of the method are apparent in one of the studied catchments. A better understanding of the underlying processes may help with more accurate parameterisations of the weights assigned to the chain of events. The presented method may be considered a starting point to quantify the risk posed by increasingly unstable ice on high and steep slopes to hydropower infrastructures in the Himalayan catchments.

Keywords: Hanging glaciers; Glacier avalanche; Risk assessment; Himalaya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-023-06389-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:120:y:2024:i:5:d:10.1007_s11069-023-06389-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-023-06389-w

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().