Study on evaluation of cities ability reduc-ing earthquake disasters

Introduction At the end of last century, the Committee of International Decade for Natural Disaster Re-duction had called on evaluating the ability reducing earthquake disasters of cities. However, since efficient method to assess earthquake loss of cities does not exist, the proposition did not come true. In 1994, China government put forward that the cities with dense population or developed economy and the areas off the seashore should have the ability to resist earthquake (M=6). Un-dou…

Study on evaluation of cities' ability reducing earthquake disasters

Cities ability reducing earthquake disasters is a complex system involving numerous factors, moreover the re-search on evaluating cities ability reducing earthquake disasters relates to multi-subject, such as earthquake sci-ence, 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 seis-mic casualty and economic loss during the future earthquakes that are likely to occur in the city and its surround-ings and time required for recovery after earthquake; based upon these three basic elements, a framework, which consists of six main components, for evaluating citys 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 re-covery 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.