Flood warning reviews in North America and Europe : Statements and silence

This paper examines the many recent reviews of flood warning systems in North America and Europe. My purpose is to set out the main themes and issues contained in these reviews. It is also interesting and important to establish areas and issues not covered by the reviews, and I try to identify these areas of silence. A serious omission of the US and European material is the failure to explicitly conceptualise the warning task as being about enabling the communities, enterprises and individuals at risk to take action to reduce their risk and property losses. Processes are needed to ensure that the needs of those at risk drive warning system design. (AU)

The general agreement on trades and tariffs 1994 and the north American free trade agreement : Initiatives to eliminate technical barriers to trade

Many Canadian business import goods into Canada or export goods from Canada. These businesses should be knowledgeable about national product standarts, technical requirements, health and safety regulations and environmental regulations which can act as technical barriers for those companies importing or exporting goods. Fortunately, international trade agreements such as the General Agreenment on Trades and Tariffs 1994 and the North American Free Trade agreenment do not impose or encourage these types of technical barries to trade. Instead, these agreenments encourage harmonization of regulations and standards among their members, and the implementation of international standards, such as the ISO 9000 and the ISO 14000, which will reduce the likelihood of national standards and regulations acting as barries to trade (AU)

Geologic and hydrologic hazards in glacierized basins in North American resulting from 19th and 20th century global warming

Alpine glacier retreat resulting warming since the close of the Little Ice Age in the 19th and 20th centureis has increased the risk and incidence of some geologic and hydrologic hazards in mountainous alpine regions of North American. Abundant loose debris in recently deglaciated areas at the toe of alpine glaciers provides a ready sources of sediment during rainstorms or outburst floods. This sediment can cause debris flows and sedimentation problems in dowstream areas. Many glacier-dammed lakes have grown in size while ice dams have shrunk, resulting in greater risks of ice-dam-failure. The retreat and thinning of glacier ice has left oversteepened, unstable valley walls and has led to increased incidence of rock and debris avalanches (AU)

Expected tsunami amplitudes and currents along the North American coast for cascadia subduction zone earthquakes

Tsunamis are numerically modeled using the nonlinear shallow-water equations for three hypothetical Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes. Maximun zero-to-peak tsunami amplitudes and currents are tabulated for 131 sites along the North American coast. Earthquake source parameters are chosen to satisfy known subduction zone configuration and thermal constraints. These source parameters are used as input to compute vertical sea-flood displacement. The three earthquakes modeled are moment magnitude 8.8, 8.5 and 7.8. Maximun zero-to peak tsunami amplitude for the Mw=8.8 earthquake is near 6 m normal to the fault break and maximum current is near3.5 m/s. Maximum amplitudes decrease by about one-half north and south of the fault break in the source region. Tsunami amplitudes vary along yhe Alaskan coast from less than 0.5 to 1.6 m. The modeled amplitudes for the Mw=8.8 quake decrease to less than 0.4 m south of Point Conception, CA. The Mw=7.8 earthquake generates a tsunami with a maximum amplitude of less than 1 m normal to the source (AU)