In different areas of the world, much of the damage due to wind is caused by non-synoptic, local wind storm events, such as tornadoes and downbursts. In North America the damage due to these winds is more than 65% of total wind damage, and there are no guidelines or code implementations to deal with such catastrophic events. As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, current research is in its first phase of addressing these types of events, from their characterization, simulation, and loading, to collapse-mode effects on buildings and structures, as well as socioeconomic implications. The need is clear to better understand non-synoptic local winds; properly simulate them; assess the difference in loading between these events and synoptic large-scale winds that have been part of the wind engineering practice for more than five decades; determine their statistics and associated risks; and apply this through guidelines, codes, risk mitigation, and adaptation responses to socioeconomic impact. The Oxford Handbook of Non-Synoptic Wind Storms, led by Dr. Horia Hangan and Dr. Ahsan Kareem, features nearly 30 chapters, contributed by an international panel of leading scientists, scholars, and engineers, that address these issues and stimulate thought, research, and responses to non-synoptic wind storm hazards in North America and worldwide. Together, these articles provide clear definitions of the problems to be tackled, offer a strategic framework for forward-looking research, identify the best-suited tools and methodologies to address the problems at hand, and suggest ways to maximize collaborative planning between the disciplines that will tackle these challenges.

"Wind storms impact human lives, their built as well as natural habitat. During the last century, society's vulnerability to wind storms has been reduced by enhanced knowledge of their impact and by controlling exposure through better design. However, only two of the wind systems have so far been considered in the design of buildings and structures, i.e., synoptic winds resulting from macroscale weather systems spanning thousands of kilometers, e.g., extratropical storms, and mesoscale tropical storms spanning hundreds of kilometers and traveling fast, e.g., hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones. During the last two decades, enough evidence has surfaced to support that a third type of very localized wind storms, the non-synoptic winds, are the most damaging in some regions of the world. Thus far there are no design provisions established for the codification of these wind storms. Their characterization in terms of climatology, wind field and intensity, frequency and occurrence, as well as their impact on the built environment, is slowly developing. This handbook presents the state-of-the-art of knowledge related to all these features including their risk, insurance issues, and economics. The research in this area is on the one hand more arduous given the reduced scale, the three-dimensionality, and nonstationary aspects of these non-synoptic winds while, at the same time, its understanding and modeling are being aided by the emergence of novel modeling and simulation techniques which are addressed in this handbook. This will serve as a guiding resource for those interested in learning about and contributing to the advancement of the field"--

"Wind storms impact human lives, their built as well as natural habitat. During the last century, society's vulnerability to wind storms has been reduced by enhanced knowledge of their impact and by controlling exposure through better design. However, only two of the wind systems have so far been considered in the design of buildings and structures, i.e., synoptic winds resulting from macroscale weather systems spanning thousands of kilometers, e.g., extratropical storms, and mesoscale tropical storms spanning hundreds of kilometers and traveling fast, e.g., hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones. During the last two decades, enough evidence has surfaced to support that a third type of very localized wind storms, the non-synoptic winds, are the most damaging in some regions of the world. Thus far there are no design provisions established for the codification of these wind storms. Their characterization in terms of climatology, wind field and intensity, frequency and occurrence, as well as their impact on the built environment, is slowly developing. This handbook presents the state-of-the-art of knowledge related to all these features including their risk, insurance issues, and economics. The research in this area is on the one hand more arduous given the reduced scale, the three-dimensionality, and nonstationary aspects of these non-synoptic winds while, at the same time, its understanding and modeling are being aided by the emergence of novel modeling and simulation techniques which are addressed in this handbook. This will serve as a guiding resource for those interested in learning about and contributing to the advancement of the field"--

This book gathers the peer-reviewed papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions (SAHC), held in Kyoto, Japan, on September 12-15, 2023. It highlights the latest advances and innovations in the field of conservation and restoration of historical and heritage structures. The conference topics encompass history of construction and building technology, theory and practice of conservation, inspection methods, non-destructive techniques and laboratory testing, numerical modeling and structural analysis, management of heritage structures and conservation strategies, structural health monitoring, repair and strengthening strategies and techniques, vernacular constructions, seismic analysis and retrofit, vulnerability and risk analysis, resilience of historic areas to climate change and hazard events, durability, and sustainability. As such the book represents an invaluable, up-to-the-minute tool, providing an essential overview of conservation of historical constructions, and offers an important platform to engineers, architects, archeologists, and geophysicists. Chapter The Challenges of the Conservation of Earthen Sites in Seismic Areas, Chapter Performance Evaluation of Patch Repairs on Historic Concrete Structures (PEPS): Preliminary Results from Two English Case Studies are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This intriguing volume provides a thorough examination of the historical roots of global climate change as a field of inquiry, from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. Based on primary and archival sources, the book is filled with interesting perspectives on what people have understood, experienced, and feared about the climate and its changes in the past. Chapters explore climate and culture in Enlightenment thought; climate debates in early America; the development of international networks of observation; the scientific transformation of climate discourse; and early contributions to understanding terrestrial temperature changes, infrared radiation, and the carbon dioxide theory of climate. But perhaps most important, this book shows what a study of the past has to offer the interdisciplinary investigation of current environmental problems.

Hurricanes are nature's most destructive storms and they are becoming more powerful as the globe warms. Hurricane Climatology explains how to analyze and model hurricane data to better understand and predict present and future hurricane activity. It uses the open-source and now widely used R software for statistical computing to create a tutorial-style manual for independent study, review, and reference. The text is written around the code that when copied will reproduce the graphs, tables, and maps. The approach is different from other books that use R. It focuses on a single topic and explains how to make use of R to better understand the topic. The book is organized into two parts, the first of which provides material on software, statistics, and data. The second part presents methods and models used in hurricane climate research.

How the world evolved to its present dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels, the problems that ensued including the threat of disruptive global climate change and hazards associated with our increasing dependence on unreliable but currently indispensable sources of energy such as oil, and the opportunities for a more sustainable energy future.