Assessment of Seismic Vulnerability
Chapter 1: Introduction to Seismic Vulnerability Assessment
1. Background
Earthquakes and other natural hazards can create disasters of uncontrollable magnitudes when they hit large metropolitan areas. Earthquake risk assessment is used to quantify potential social and economic losses from earthquakes. Risk assessment is an integral part of disaster mitigation. It provides the critical information about on the characteristics of potential disasters in a region and allows planners to identify and prioritize mitigation opportunities. A loss estimation study or risk assessment for a major metropolitan area could take months, if not years to collect the underlying data and would require the participation of experts from several fields, thus limiting the practical application of this technique. Despite their complexity, risk assessment studies have proven to be a very useful tool for developing emergency preparedness plans and for promoting seismic risk mitigation.
With the advances of information technology, it is now possible to overcome the difficulties in data collection and analysis and to significantly improve the efficiency and accessibility of risk assessment techniques. Efficient software applications can now be developed that provide users with options for exploring outcomes from multiple scenarios, displaying output and query results under an easy to use computing environment. With the use of these tools, urban planners, emergency managers, risk managers, and public policy/ decision makers can understand the impact of earthquakes, study the effect of mitigation techniques and incorporate the results into preparedness programs and urban development plans. The potential of expanding the use of risk assessment techniques using the information technology tools to an audience of urban planners and policy/decision makers is critical to creating a dynamic process for integrating earthquake risk evaluations in the management and development of mega
1. Background
Earthquakes and other natural hazards can create disasters of uncontrollable magnitudes when they hit large metropolitan areas. Earthquake risk assessment is used to quantify potential social and economic losses from earthquakes. Risk assessment is an integral part of disaster mitigation. It provides the critical information about on the characteristics of potential disasters in a region and allows planners to identify and prioritize mitigation opportunities. A loss estimation study or risk assessment for a major metropolitan area could take months, if not years to collect the underlying data and would require the participation of experts from several fields, thus limiting the practical application of this technique. Despite their complexity, risk assessment studies have proven to be a very useful tool for developing emergency preparedness plans and for promoting seismic risk mitigation.
With the advances of information technology, it is now possible to overcome the difficulties in data collection and analysis and to significantly improve the efficiency and accessibility of risk assessment techniques. Efficient software applications can now be developed that provide users with options for exploring outcomes from multiple scenarios, displaying output and query results under an easy to use computing environment. With the use of these tools, urban planners, emergency managers, risk managers, and public policy/ decision makers can understand the impact of earthquakes, study the effect of mitigation techniques and incorporate the results into preparedness programs and urban development plans. The potential of expanding the use of risk assessment techniques using the information technology tools to an audience of urban planners and policy/decision makers is critical to creating a dynamic process for integrating earthquake risk evaluations in the management and development of mega