Earthquake Disaster Gis and Spatial-temporal Pattern of Earthquake Disasters in China1

This paper summarizes the development of a Geographic Information System for managing and analyzing information on the effects of earthquakes in historical times of China. The extensive bibliography documenting the seismicity from B.C.3000 showed the need to proceed towards a type of data storage that would also allow management of the same data. Application of GIS techniques allowed us to insert, extract, handle and analyze the data for the zoning of seismic damage. The end-product consists of information layers such as maps of earthquake intensity, the expected damage, and hazard involved, as well as numerical tables associated to maps. The study was developed using ARCGIS9.2 software and is structured in thematic vectorial levels and rasters. The overlapping themes constitute a spatial data base, into which all information on the historical Seismicity of China, starting from B.C.3000, by means of archives and literature, are channeled. The damaged sites are located on a map, with all the information on the historical earthquake (death toll, number of collapsed houses, economic losses.) being associated to each site. The GIS is structured in such a way as to be able to be integrated with further georeferenced data and with other databases.Moreover,the system within the GIS initial processing offers a high level of analysis sophistication and integrates state-of-the-art information processing tools, which enable end-users to construct interpretative summaries, especially the spatial-temporal pattern of seismic hazard in China is conducted, it is thus able to provide support both for assess the damage, define its geographical distribution, identify the regions repeatedly affected by seismic events, quantify the level of seismicity and extend the assessment to other natural risks.