This paper describes methods for estimating building losses that were developed for the FEMA/NIBS earthquake loss estimation methodology (Whitman et al., 1997). These methods are of a new form and represent a significant step forward in the prediction of earthquake impacts. Unlike previous building loss models that are based on Modified Mercalli Intensity, the new methods use quantitative measures of ground shaking (and ground failure) and analyze model building types in a similar manner to the engineering analysis of a single structure. Direct economic losses predicted by these new methods for typical single-family homes compare well with observed losses to Los Angeles County residences damaged by the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

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A number of methods have been developed with the aim of estimating the damage or effects of future earthquakes. As this field continues to rapidly expand, it is valuable to gain some perspective by comparing a representative sample of methods to see in what respects they are similar or different. The most significant conclusion of this review is that the use to which a damage estimation may be put is the single most important factor and, while there is already an extensive array of methods, there has been relatively little in the way of practical application.

The recent 75th anniversary of the 1931 Hawke’s Bay Earthquake reminds us that a particular earthquake can have a great effect on the development of engineering methods to contend with this natural hazard. Factors other than the occurrence of a single earthquake are also present before and after such a historically important event, and there are examples of countries that began on the path toward modern earthquake engineering in the absence of any particular earthquake playing an important causal role. An earthquake that was large in seismological (e.g. magnitude) or engineering (e.g. destructiveness) measures may have had little effect on engineering tools developed to contend with the earthquake problem. The history of earthquake engineering is not merely a set of events rigidly tied to a chronology of major earthquakes. Nonetheless, some significant earthquakes have been step function events on the graph of long-term progress in earthquake engineering. Only earthquakes that bring together several prerequisites have had such historic effects, creating in a country a beachhead for earthquake engineering that persisted in the following decades. In this brief historical review, the following seminal earthquakes are discussed: 1906 Northern California, United States; 1908 Reggio-Messina, Italy; 1923 Kanto, Japan; 1931 Mach and 1935 Quetta, India-Pakistan; 1931 Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.