Implications of building code enforcement and urban expansion on future earthquake loss in East Africa: case study—Blantyre, Malawi

Nicola Giordano (), Raffaele De Risi, John Macdonald, Katsuichiro Goda, Innocent Kafodya and Ignasio Ngoma
Additional contact information
Nicola Giordano: University of Bristol
Raffaele De Risi: University of Bristol
John Macdonald: University of Bristol
Katsuichiro Goda: Western University
Innocent Kafodya: University of Malawi
Ignasio Ngoma: University of Malawi

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2023, vol. 117, issue 1, No 46, 1083-1104

Abstract: Abstract Rapid and uncontrolled urbanisation in many parts of Africa is a significant driver of earthquake risk. New constructions are usually built with no compliance with seismic codes, which results in a critical increase in the vulnerability of the building stock. To quantitatively assess the potential consequences of unregulated urbanisation, this study investigates the effect of building code enforcement and urban expansion on the future earthquake loss in the city of Blantyre, Malawi. The analysis, performed within a probabilistic loss assessment framework, estimates the net present value of 30-year aggregated seismic loss for different urban expansion rates and code enforcement scenarios. The results show that high urbanisation rates and lack of building regulations could lead to a threefold increase in average seismic losses in the next thirty years. On the contrary, effective code enforcement could cap the seismic loss increase at 13%, highlighting the financial gain from effective disaster risk reduction programmes.

Keywords: Catastrophe modelling; Seismic loss assessment; Urban expansion; Code enforcement; East Africa; Blantyre; Malawi (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-023-05895-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:117:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11069-023-05895-1

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-023-05895-1

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 ().