Earthquake Risk Reduction: From Scenario Simulators Including Systemic Interdependency to Impact Indicators

Abstract

Earthquakes have a strong effect on the socio-economic well-being of countries; the consequences can lead to a complex cascade of related incidents, expanding across sectors and borders, and in a more serious context, to our basic survivability. An urban area consists on several complex and highly connected systems. A significant loss of housing, education, power outages or other component would have substantial negative impacts. How would constrains in residential areas affect the residential distribution of the region? How would a general change in accessibility due to severe damage affect the population or the economy (employment changes)?Disasters are still predominantly seen as exogenous events, unexpected and unforeseen shocks that affect normally functioning economic systems and societies rather than as endogenous indicators, an integrated, and mutually influencing process where financial, health, economic and social risks are considered as both facets and at the same time contributing factors in an interdependent process of risk creation, accumulation, mitigation, and transference.Seismic scenario simulators have been used as tools to estimate damages inflicted by earthquakes in a region. Up to now this powerful simulators calculate and maps the direct damages on urban environment such as the building stock and infrastructures, not including the propagation effects among these components. This paper presents a novel approach to study in a macro scale an urban region, including the systemic interdependencies among urban elements. The methodology allows the observation of urban disruptions caused by the interdependencies and measured through a Disruption index. This index permits to identify the most vulnerable elements, being essential for the risk reduction.

Development of a System for Cyclic Shear Tests on Full-Scale Walls

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The Potential of CEB Reinforced Masonry Technology for (Re)construction in the Context of Disasters

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