Saving lives in earthquakes: successes and failures in seismic protection since 1960

This paper will look at what we have and have not achieved in reducing the risks to human life from earthquakes in the last 50 years. It will review how success has been achieved in a few parts of the world, and consider what needs to be done by the scientific and engineering community globally to assist in the future task of bringing earthquake risks under control. The first part of the talk will re-examine what we know about the casualties from earthquakes in the last 50 years. Almost 80% of about 1 million deaths turn out to have been caused by just ten great earthquakes, together affecting a tiny proportion of the territory at risk from heavy ground shaking. The disparity between richer and poorer countries is also evident, not only in fatality rates, but also in their rates of change. But the existing casualty database turns out to be a very poor basis for observing such differences, not only because of the small number of lethal events, but also because of the very limited data on causes of death, types and causes of injury. These have been examined in detail in only a few, recent events. All that can be said with certainty is that a few wealthier earthquake-prone countries or regions have made impressive progress in reducing the risk of death from earthquakes, while most of the rest of the world has achieved comparatively little, and in some areas the problem has become much worse. The second part of the paper looks in more detail at what has been achieved country-by-country. Based on a new expert-group survey of key individuals involved in earthquake risk mitigation, it will examine what are perceived to be the successes and failures of risk mitigation in each country or group of countries. This survey will be used to highlight the achievements of those countries which have successfully tackled their earthquake risk; it will examine the processes of earthquake risk mitigation, from campaigning to retrofitting, and it will consider to what extent the achievement is the result of affluence, scientific and technical activity, political advocacy, public awareness, or the experience of destructive events. It will ask to what extent the approaches pioneered by the global leaders can be adopted by the rest. The final section of the talk will argue that it can be useful to view earthquake protection activity as a public health matter to be advanced in a manner similar to globally successful disease-control measures: it will be argued that the key components of such programmes—building in protection; harnessing new technology and creating a safety culture—must be the key components of earthquake protection strategies also. It will consider the contribution which the scientific and engineering community can make to bringing down today’s unacceptably high global earthquake risk. It will be suggested that this role is wider than commonly understood and needs to include: Building-in protection

Evolving metasomatic agent in the Northern Andean subduction zone, deduced from magma composition of the long-lived Pichincha volcanic complex (Ecuador)

Geochemical studies of long-lived volcanic complexes are crucial for the understanding of the nature and composition of the subduction component of arc magmatism. The Pichincha Volcanic Complex (Northern Andean Volcanic Zone) consists of: (1) an old, highly eroded edifice, the Rucu Pichincha, whose lavas are mostly andesites, erupted from 1,100 to 150 ka; and (2) a younger, essentially dacitic, Guagua Pichincha composite edifice, with three main construction phases (Basal Guagua Pichincha, Toaza, and Cristal) which developed over the last 60 ka. This structural evolution was accompanied by a progressive increase of most incompatible trace element abundances and ratios, as well as by a sharp decrease of fluid-mobile to fluid-immobile element ratios. Geochemical data indicate that fractional crystallization of an amphibole-rich cumulate may account for the evolution from the Guagua Pichincha andesites to dacites. However, in order to explain the transition between the Rucu Pichincha andesites and Guagua Pichincha dacites, the mineralogical and geochemical data indicate the predominance of magma mixing processes between a mafic, trace-element depleted, mantle-derived end-member, and a siliceous, trace-element enriched, adakitic end-member. The systematic variation of trace element abundances and ratios in primitive samples leads us to propose that the Rucu Pichincha magmas came from a hydrous-fluid metasomatized mantle wedge, whereas Guagua Pichincha magmas are related to partial melting of a siliceous-melt metasomatized mantle. This temporal evolution implies a change from dehydration to partial melting of the slab, which may be associated with an increase in the geothermal gradient along the slab due to the presence of the subducted Carnegie Ridge at the subduction system. This work emphasizes the importance of studying arc-magma systems over long periods of time (of at least 1 million of years), in order to evaluate the potential variations of the slab contribution into the mantle source of the arc magmatism.     

Influence of Thermal Effects on the Wind Field Within the Urban Environment

Micrometeorological conditions in the vicinity of urban buildings strongly influence the requirements that are imposed on building heating and cooling. The goal of the present study, carried out within the Advance Tools for Rational Energy Use towards Sustainability (ATREUS) European research network, is the evaluation of the wind field around buildings with walls heated by solar radiation. Two computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes were validated against extensive wind-tunnel observations to assess the influence of thermal effects on model performance. The code selected from this validation was used to simulate the wind and temperature fields for a summer day in a specific region of the city of Lisbon. For this study, the meteorological data produced by a non-hydrostatic mesoscale atmospheric model (MM5) were used as boundary conditions for a CFD code, which was further applied to analyze the effects of local roughness elements and thermodynamic conditions on the air flow around buildings. The CFD modelling can also provide the inflow parameters for a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system, used to evaluate the building energy budgets and to predict performance of the air-conditioning system. The main finding of the present three-dimensional analyses is that thermal forcing associated with the heating of buildings can significantly modify local properties of the air flow.