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This article presents a methodological approach to flood direct tangible damage - damage to assets and direct intangible damage - environmental damage and loss of life assessment. The assessment of flood risk is an essential part of the risk management approach, which is the conceptual basis for the EU directive 2007/60/ES on the assessment and management of flood risk. The purpose of this directive is to establish a framework for the assessment and management of flood risk, aiming at the reduction of the adverse consequences for human health, the environment, cultural heritage and economic activity associated with flood in the community. Overall, an accurate estimation of negative effects on assets, environment and people is important in order to be able to determine the economy, environmental and social flood risk level in a system and the effects of risk mitigation measures.

The intensification of agriculture relies on the application of large quantities of phytosanitary products, which contaminate the air, soil, water, and risk human life. This study was carried out in the Gharb plain, which belongs to the Sebou watershed in the North-West of Morocco. The goal of this study is to evaluate the contamination of the groundwater by insecticides using liquid chromatographytandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and Gas Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) analyses. This research paper covers the analysis of 20 samples of 20 different wells for an irrigated perimeter of 250,000 ha of the surface. Further, the analyses show the presence of intense contamination caused by insecticides, which areconcentrated in the southern part of the study area, where the contamination level is 50% of the water samples. This exceeds the norm of the World Health Organization (WHO) standard, which is represented in 0.5 µg/l. Furthermore, the analyses also detect the presence of 22 active ingredients of insecticides, such as malathion, methomylalderine, dieldrin, and fenthion. Risk assessment in our studies allowed us to determine that the different RQ calculated for five insecticides (Malathion; Mythomil; chloropyrifos-ethyl; Diazinon) recorded in underground water were up to 1, which proves the intensive use of insecticide in this region and the high risk of contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to strengthen the flexural behavior of structural elements with external pre-stressing tendons, thereby improving their load-carrying capacity and increasing their resistance against the external load. Different techniques were used to apply external pre-stressed strengthening to RC beams and RC frames. Seven identical RC frames were analyzed: an original sample without an external tendon, two strengthened samples with external tendons at the positive bending zone, two strengthened samples with external tendons at the beam–column connection zone, a strengthened sample with external straight line tendons along the beam and, finally, a strengthened sample with external U-shape tendons along the beam of the frame. The analysis and the results were obtained using ANSYS WORKBENCH finite element (FE) program. Comparisons were performed between these techniques to determine which technique is better for strengthening. The failure mode, vertical deflection, column stress, load-carrying capacity, and ductility of the samples were listed and analyzed under four-point vertical loading. The results show that using external tendons significantly increases the load capacity and the stiffness of structural frames. Moreover, the tendon in the beam zone is more effective than the tendon in the column zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The disasters of the past few years have shown the importance of prevention and preparedness, not only in Hungary and in the Slovak Republic, but all over the world. In 2010, the floods of the rivers Hernád/Hornád, Sajó/Slaná and Bódva/Bodva caused serious problems for these nations, affecting several settlements with thousands of inhabitants. The inhabitants and enterprises of the targeted area come in for the results from the flood risk assessment, by having a more secure environment. The methodology is applicable in other water courses in Hungary and in the Slovak Republic as well in the other countries. The aim of the presented study was to assess the distribution of flood-risk potential at the regional scale. A progressive approach integrating geographical information system (GIS) with method of multicriteria analysis (MCA) - analytic hierarchy process (AHP). In the analyses, the most causative factors for flooding were taken into account such as monthly precipitation, soil type, land use, basin slope. A case study of flood vulnerability identification in the Bodva catchment area has been employed. Spatial estimation of flood-risk potential should be one of the basic steps for complex geo-ecological evaluation and delimitation of landscape considering water resources management, groundwater pollution, prediction of soil erosion and sediment transport and some other important landscape-ecological factors. The obtained results indicate that AHP method shows good results as related to the existing floods in the recent years in Bodva catchment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the presented study was to assess the distribution of flood-risk potential (FRP) at the regional scale. A progressive approach integrating geographical information system (GIS) with two different methods of multicriteria analysis (MCA)--analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and ranking method (RM) was applied in the process. In the analyses, the most causative factors for flooding were taken into account, urban spatial planning, such as soil type, daily precipitation, land use, size of the catchment and average basin slope. A case study of flood vulnerability identification in the Hornád and Bodrog catchments' areas in eastern Slovakia has been employed to illustrate two different approaches. Spatial estimation of FRP should be one of the basic steps for complex geoecological evaluation and delimitation of landscape considering water resources management, groundwater pollution, prediction of soil erosion and sediment transport and some other important landscape-ecological factors. The obtained results indicate that RM method shows better results as related to the existing floods in the recent years in Bodrog and Hornád catchment than AHP method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]