Quick and Approximate Estimation of Earthquake Loss Based on Macroscopic Index of Exposure and Population Distribution

In the traditional method of earthquake loss estimation, all exposed facilities are classified according to their structural type and/or occupancy. Inventory data is collected and the total loss is estimated as the aggregate of all facility losses from each facility class separately. For many regions of the world, however, the vast amount of data required for this method is difficult or impossible to obtain. The traditional method is also unable to estimate quickly the loss from an unexpected catastrophic earthquake. It is difficult to give the necessary risk information to help the government with rescue and relief after the earthquake disaster. In this paper, we propose a quick and approximate estimation method of earthquake loss based on a macroscopic index of exposure and population distribution from GIS. This method was applied to analyze several earthquake scenarios with World Bank and CIESIN data. The preliminary analysis and comparison results show that our method is effective and reasonable for quick assessment of earthquake risk. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997