Challenging effects of the disaster prevention and mitigation on the Belt and Road Initiative are analyzed in this paper, including the information sharing and the cooperation mechanisms for disaster reduction, disaster formation mechanism and research and development of disaster control technology, and disaster risk assessment. The reduction of the major disaster risk becomes an imperative requirement in the Belt and Road regions. Many improvements have been made, for instance, in scientific research and capacity of disaster prevention and mitigation, in cooperation in disaster reduction among Belt and Road countries, in comprehensive risk prevention awareness and ability, and in professional talent cultivation. An international collaboration platform of inclusive, sharing, efficient and scientific disaster prevention and mitigation need to be established. Some countermeasures are put forward with respect to the international cooperation in the disaster control, such as improving the disaster prevention and mitigation capacity, the establishment mechanism and pattern, and creating scientific and technological innovation platform. These suggestions and advices concern the intellectual support in the disaster prevention and mitigation in the Belt and Road areas.

The UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction says that the disaster risk reduction is imperative for all mankind. The consensus and the efforts with respects to the disaster risk reduction at the international level are expected in regional and local levels; and it is necessary to explore the disaster risk pattern and its regional and local features. This paper analyzes a coordinative regional disaster risk management model in the physical and social contexts of the Belt and Road regions. This model coordinates stakeholders and tasked the stakeholder at multiple levels with different responsibilities, from a national framework to a regional and local government action plan. In addition, different phases of a disaster event are covered by the risk management pattern to enhance the resilience to disaster risks of all stakeholders in the regions for the regional sustainable development.

The Belt and Road Initiative covers an area across the Asia, the Europe and the Africa, characterized by complex geological structures and extremely undulating terrains. As a result, different kinds of geo-hazards, such as the landslide, the collapse and the debris flow, seriously hamper the socioeconomic development and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative. It is the scientific basis for understanding the regional distribution pattern and the disaster mechanism of geo-hazards to identify the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of geo-hazards in the historical period in the Belt and Road regions. In this paper, based on the statistics of geo-hazards during 1922-2015 along the Belt and Road regions, the spatiotemporal characteristic and the influence factors are discussed. The statistical results show that (1) the geo-hazards along the Belt and Road regions show an irregular fluctuation trend, and the scale and the influence degree of geo-hazards are gradually increased; (2) India is the country with the highest frequency of geo-hazards. Furthermore, the frequencies of geo-hazards in the Southeast Asia, for example, Myanmar, Philippines, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Asia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and in the East Asia, for example, China, Japan, are significantly greater than in other countries; (3) in the studied period, one sees a frequency of 82.3 events and an average of 75 injurers and 292 deaths every year; (4) the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Bangladesh-China-India-Burma Economic Corridor are the regions of a higher frequency of geo-hazards. The reasonable results of the risk assessment of geo-hazards conducted on the key regions along the Belt and Road can help better distribute the limited relief resource. The technologies of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Terrestrial Laser Scanning in the field investigation help to acquire high-precision data and provide the basic information for subsequent researches.

The Belt and Road Initiative is proposed to promote mutual development and enhance cooperation to achieve the result of ‘all win’. However, due to the complicated geographical environment and various climatic conditions of all the countries along the Belt and Road regions, frequent natural hazards are threatening human lives and property. Therefore, measures of hazard reduction for the countries along the Belt and Road regions will not only help strengthen the Silk Road's scientific and technological innovation cooperation, but also strengthen mutual trust in national diplomatic strategies and ensure the safety for people's lives and property. This paper discusses the hazard reduction of the Belt and Road countries in the support of the ground observation technology, and the technology improvement of the global spatial technology, as well as the role that the new technology plays in the hazard reduction from the perspective of landslides.

The Belt and Road area is vast, with a wide distribution of active seismogenic structures and frequent earthquakes. The seismic hazard assessment and the seismic hazard mapping in this area are of great significance in the earthquake prevention of buildings and the disaster mitigation design of engineering facilities. This paper analyzes the seismogenic source area division model, the seismicity model, the ground motion attenuation relationship model and the site adjustment method in the Belt and Road area. The probabilistic seismic hazard calculation is carried out in the area, and the seismic hazard map of the peak ground acceleration (PGA) distribution with 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years is obtained, and the countermeasures for the earthquake prevention and the disaster mitigation in different seismic hazard areas are proposed. It is shown that the East and Southeast Asia, the western Pacific Ocean, the southern Central Asia, the eastern West Asia, the southern Europe and the eastern Africa are areas with a high seismic hazard in the Belt and Road regions. In the area with the PGA larger than 0.4 with 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years, the general civil buildings should be equipped with the capacity to resist a seismic intensity of 9 degrees.

This paper investigates the extreme maximum temperature event characterization and the population exposure in the Belt and Road regions by using the maximum temperature form ERA-Interim reanalysis dataset and the gridded population dataset in the period from 1979 to 2018. The extreme maximum temperature threshold is determined based on the 95% quartile of the daily maximum temperature. The improved Intensity-Area-Duration (IAD) method is used to determine the extreme maximum temperature event characteristics and the quantitative assessment of the population exposure to these extreme events. It is shown that, in the Belt and Road area, the frequency, the intensity and the duration of the summer extreme maximum temperature events are increased in the 1979-2018 period. The significant increase area is distributed in eastern China, western Russia and Central Eastern Europe. In summer, the extreme maximum temperature events mostly occur in Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, and central Russia, generally, in the northern part of the study area. The intensity high value area is mainly distributed in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India and other places in the southwest region whereas the duration high value area is concentrated in India mainly. During the study period, the yearly cumulative impact area and the population exposure to extreme temperature events show an upward trend, reaching the highest value in the past 10 years. Areas with the high population exposure are mainly distributed in eastern China, Indian continent and countries around the Black Sea and the areas with high population exposure are expanding. Among the influencing factors of the population exposure, the climate factor, the population factor, the interaction of the climate and population factors have a similar contribution rate, but the contribution rate of the climatic factors has increased significantly in the past 10 years. It is suggested to strengthen the research of monitoring, warning and forecast of the extreme maximum temperature events.

As an important international river in Indo-china Peninsula, the Lancang-Mekong river flows past one of the most promising regions in Asia and the world. However, it is also an area with a high risk of flood disasters, which often brings about huge economic losses and human casualties in the basin countries. Due to the large differences in the water infrastructure investment and the different national awareness and experiences in the flood disaster reduction, it is necessary to enhance the regional cooperation for the flood disaster risk management among basin countries. This paper reviews the progress of the collaboration with respect to the flood disaster risk reduction in the Lancang-Mekong river basin in three phases. On this basis, some suggestions are proposed in view of the different efforts in the collaboration with respect to the flood disaster risk reduction among stakeholders, to improve the cooperation mechanism and effectively deal with the flood related issues in the LangcangMekong river basin for sustainable development.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a platform for countries to explore new international economic governance mechanisms, which was proposed by Chinese government in 2013. But the frequent natural disasters along the BRI countries seriously affect people's livelihood security and local economic and social development and become one of the important threats for the construction of BRI. Based on a literature review of existing disaster prevention and mitigation mechanisms, this paper analyzes the cooperation mechanism of cross-border natural disaster prevention and mitigation, and puts forward some suggestions. The study finds, (1) Cross-border disaster prevention and mitigation has gradually attracted research attention, but there are still long way to go in China. On the one hand, the international research is relatively mature, with a significant upward trend since 2010, and pays more attention to the role of geographic information technology and other technical means in the cross-border disaster prevention, and the establishment of an evaluation system to evaluate cross-regional disasters in order to improve the early warning mechanism for the disaster prevention and mitigation. On the other hand, Chinese researches mainly focus on measures and countermeasures based on the evaluation of the regional cross-border disaster prevention and mitigation, and the cooperation mechanisms for the cross-border disaster prevention and reduction. (2) The current cross-border major natural disaster prevention and mitigation mechanisms mainly include four aspects, namely, the international disaster reduction cooperation mechanism under the UN, the high-level interaction and diplomatic dialogue mechanism for disaster prevention and mitigation, the inter-country docking of the disaster prevention and mitigation framework and management system, and the sharing mechanism of disaster prevention and reduction technology. (3) In the future, China and the BRI countries should further promote cooperation in strengthening political mutual trust, building a comprehensive disaster prevention and mitigation platform, establishing cooperation and consultation mechanisms, and the sharing of disaster prevention and technology.

Along the Belt and Road regions is a high incidence area of earthquakes, droughts, floods and other disasters. The disaster risk reduction is highly required, but the data and information service capabilities in the regions are relatively weak. For the need of the knowledge service of disaster risk reduction, this paper discusses the origin of the knowledge service and the main characteristics of the knowledge service system. A framework of the knowledge service for the disaster risk reduction is constructed, centered on the global disaster meta-database, the disaster risk reduction knowledge network and the portal of the knowledge service system. The disaster risk reduction knowledge service system (DRRKS) is established and the basic applications are analyzed, including the disaster metadata standard, the data product, the knowledge applications and the case sharing. The typical applications of the current disaster risk reduction knowledge service system in the area along the Belt and Road regions include the knowledge service application of the Belt and Road disaster environment data, the application of the thematic knowledge in the spatial-temporal display of the arable land drought level along the "Belt and Road" regions, the knowledge application of the spatial-temporal data service of the main historical disasters in the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor, the total factor data service knowledge application of the disaster-prevention environment land cover in Mongolia, and the knowledge application of the grassland yield in the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor of the Belt and Road. The future of the knowledge application may include six aspects: the disaster data management based on the knowledge organization, the disaster resource navigation based on the data sharing, the data-driven disaster information products, the artificial intelligence application in the disaster risk reduction, the emergency-oriented rapid disaster mapping and the application of social media data mining.