Errors in expected human losses due to incorrect seismic hazard estimates

Max Wyss (), Anastasia Nekrasova and Vladimir Kossobokov

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2012, vol. 62, issue 3, 927-935

Abstract: Seismic hazard maps are constructed by extrapolating from the frequency of small earthquakes, the annual probability of large, infrequent, earthquakes. Combining the potential contribution from all seismically active volumes, one calculates the peak ground acceleration with a probability to be exceeded by 10 % in 50 years at any given point. The consequential risk, the losses to be expected, derives from the damage the calculated shaking causes to buildings, and the impact on occupants due to collapsing structures. We show that the numbers of fatalities in recent disastrous earthquakes were underestimated by the world seismic hazard maps by approximately two to three orders of magnitude. Thus, seismic hazard maps based on the standard method cannot be used to estimate the risk to which the population is exposed due to large earthquakes. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Keywords: Seismic hazard; Seismic risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-012-0125-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:62:y:2012:i:3:p:927-935

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-012-0125-5

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().