Modeling destructive earthquake casualties based on a comparative study for Turkey

S. Turkan () and G. Özel ()

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2014, vol. 72, issue 2, 1093-1110

Abstract: The statistical modeling of destructive earthquakes is an indispensable tool for extracting information for prevention and risk reduction casualties after destructive earthquakes in a seismic region. The linear regression (LR) model can reveal the relation between casualty rate and related covariates based on earthquake catalog. However, if some covariates affect the casualty rate parametrically and some of them nonparametrically, the LR model may entail serious bias and loss of power when estimating or making inference about the effect of parameters. We suggest that semi-parametric beta regression (SBR), semi-parametric additive regression (SAR), and beta regression (BR) models could provide a more suitable description than the LR model to analyze the observed casualties after destructive earthquakes. We support this argument using destructive earthquakes occurred in Turkey between 1900 and 2012 having surface wave magnitudes five or more. The LR, SAR, BR, and SBR models are compared within the context of this data. The data strongly support that the SBR and SAR models can lead to more precise results than the BR and LR models. Furthermore, the SBR is the best model for the earthquake data since the beta distribution provides a flexible model that can be used to analyze the data involving proportions or rates. The results from this model suggest that the casualty rate depends on energy, damaged buildings, and the number of aftershocks of a destructive earthquake. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Casualty rate; Magnitude; Energy release; Beta regression; Semi-parametric regression; Semi-parametric beta regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-014-1059-x (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:72:y:2014:i:2:p:1093-1110

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-014-1059-x

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 ().