Vulnerability Analysis in Earthquake Loss Estimate

The adobes in Costa Rica have almost the same vulnerability as the old civil houses in China, which represent vulnerability in the worst case. On the other hand, the high quality buildings in Costa Rica have the same vulnerability as the reinforced concrete buildings in China due to the adoption of state-of-art techniques in design and construction, which represent the vulnerability of the best case. The macroeconomic vulnerability defined by Chen et al. falls in the middle of the two extreme cases of the inventory studied because the total macroscopic loss is the sum of losses of different types of buildings and facilities. Therefore the macroeconomic vulnerability must be greater than that of the best case and less than that of the worst. The use of macroscopic vulnerability in earthquake loss estimate is easy, simple and feasible. The vulnerability plots are preliminary in nature and should be refined with additional earthquake loss data.