Improving Earthquake Loss Estimation: Review, Assessment and Extension of Loss Estimation Methodologies

Spurred in part by the rising economic costs of natural disasters, there has been a dramatic increase in efforts aimed at estimating the direct and indirect losses caused by earthquakes. For example, in 1997 the journal Earthquake Spectra devoted a special issue to loss estimation. Papers appearing in that publication ranged from cost-benefit analyses of structural rehabilitation strategies (D’Ayala et al., 1997) to the development of real-time earthquake damage assessment tools (Eguchi et al., 1997). In 1998, MCEER published a monograph addressing the physical and socioeconomic impacts of earthquake-induced electrical power disruption in the central U.S. (Shinozuka, Rose, and Eguchi, 1998). More recently, the National Research Council Committee on Assessing the Costs of Natural Disasters published a report outlining a framework for loss estimation (National Research Council, 1999). The HAZUS methodology, developed by the National Institute of Building Sciences with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is currently one of the best-known set of loss estimation techniques (National Institute of Building Sciences, 1997). Further advances in loss estimation research have been facilitated by new geographic information system (GIS) mapping techniques, as well as by the growing body of empirical data on the physical and economic effects of recent earthquakes. Providing better estimates of potential earthquake losses is extremely challenging, because of shortages in the kinds of empirical data that are Improving Earthquake Loss Estimation: Review, Assessment and Extension of Loss Estimation Methodologies