Study on evaluation of cities’ ability reducing earthquake disasters

Cities’ ability reducing earthquake disasters is a complex system involving numerous factors, moreover the research on evaluating cities’ ability reducing earthquake disasters relates to multi-subject, such as earthquake science, social science, economical science and so on. In this paper, firstly, the conception of cities’ ability reducing earthquake disasters is presented, and the ability could be evaluated with three basic elements — the possible seismic casualty and economic loss during the future earthquakes that are likely to occur in the city and its surroundings and time required for recovery after earthquake; based upon these three basic elements, a framework, which consists of six main components, for evaluating city’s ability reducing earthquake disasters is proposed; then the statistical relations between the index system and the ratio of seismic casualty, the ratio of economic loss and recovery time are gained utilizing the cities’ prediction results of earthquake disasters which were made during the ninth five-year plan; at last, the method defining the comprehensive index of cities’ ability reducing earthquake disasters is presented. Thus the relatively comprehensive theory frame is set up. The frame can evaluate cities’ ability reducing earthquake disasters absolutely and quantitatively and consequently instruct the decision-making on reducing cities’ earthquake disasters loss. Foundation item: State Important Research Project of China (95130603).