Publication Date:
2023-07-18
Description:
Estimating the size of future earthquake disasters by fatality numbers (Fat) is possible with a useful accuracy. Governments, first responders and the population in a seismically active region can be told whether they must be prepared for major, medium, or small numbers of earthquake fatalities. Most of the fatality calculations with the tool QLARM made within minutes after earthquakes worldwide have been correct within factors of 2 to 3, or better. We expect that estimates of future numbers of fatalities are also in this range of accuracy. We follow these steps. 1) We verify that QLARM fatality estimates are correct to better than a factor of 2 for historic earthquakes. 2) We identify an active fault segment, L(local), that has not ruptured recently, and that may break in one event. 3) We estimate the magnitude, M(local), from the known relationship between L and M. 4) We calculate the number of fatalities for a line rupture of L(local), with M(local) and the local attenuation determined in step (1). 5) The data on building stock quality is contained in the program. We have estimated future earthquake fatalities in the Himalaya, China, Kirghizstan, Greece, Italy, Haiti, Portugal, Algeria, Spain, and Morocco. We have found that some regions contain only short faults typically L ≤ 30 km, implying M ≤ 6.5 and resulting in Fat 〈 several hundreds. In regions with L ≈ 100 km and 300 km, respectively (M7+ and M8) ruptures result in several thousand and several tens of thousand fatalities, respectively.
Language:
English
Type:
info:eu-repo/semantics/conferenceObject
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