Investigation of biogeophysical controls on human-landscape-ecology interaction for resilient transportation networks under hydro-hazard risks

Overview

Hydro-hazards, including floods, droughts, onshore and offshore landslides and storm surges, can pose direct threats to lives and impact livelihoods worldwide by damaging and destroying critical lifeline infrastructure (e.g. transport links, power supplies) as well as our natural ecosystem; especially under the changing climate. To mitigate risks and protect our towns, cities and our planet, we need to improve our understanding of the human-landscape-ecology interaction and characterise the complex hierarchies of revenant proves-response systems in a context of a changing and uncertain climate and environment. Inevitably, our human decision making and processes can also shape and change the natural environment, including ecosystems, river systems, vegetation and climate. We, humans, have caused such significant environmental change, which also has caused great concern about whether social and ecological systems can coexist in a sustainable manner. There is an urgent need to seek to understand how human activities can exist without disrupting the ability of natural ecosystems to function in order to help advance the concept of sustainability, and the interaction between natural hazards and human activities in order to minimize the disturbance to the onshore soil and submarine ecosystems, especially when we consider the next generation design of critical infrastructure (e.g. transport infrastructure). In particular, for example, plant root and shoot biomass – two important ecosystem attributes – are likely to influence the stability of hill slopes in complex ways. Although there is growing awareness of the benefits of ecosystem services for sustainable livelihoods in urban contexts, e.g. on the modification of climate, hydrology or soil dynamics, the potential for ecosystem-based and hybrid solutions that combine grey and green approaches has not been tapped fully yet. Therefore, several fundamental challenges exist in current research. All these recent challenges in the maintenance of the current lifeline infrastructure and design of the future lifeline infrastructure – so to be more resilient towards the changing climates and sustainable for future changes – have emphasized the need for an inter-disciplinary approach drawing upon knowledge at the interface between traditional civil engineering with geophysics, remote sensing and earth observations, engineering geology, hydrology, meteorology, data science, uncertainty quantification and ecology.

Figure 1: Fig. 1 e Broad Habitats in Marston Vale from the satellite derived Land Cover Map 2007 (Howard et al. 2013).