Articles | Volume 16, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-885-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-885-2016
Research article
 | 
01 Apr 2016
Research article |  | 01 Apr 2016

A quick earthquake disaster loss assessment method supported by dasymetric data for emergency response in China

Jinghai Xu, Jiwen An, and Gaozong Nie

Abstract. Improving earthquake disaster loss estimation speed and accuracy is one of the key factors in effective earthquake response and rescue. The presentation of exposure data by applying a dasymetric map approach has good potential for addressing this issue. With the support of 30''  ×  30'' areal exposure data (population and building data in China), this paper presents a new earthquake disaster loss estimation method for emergency response situations. This method has two phases: a pre-earthquake phase and a co-earthquake phase. In the pre-earthquake phase, we pre-calculate the earthquake loss related to different seismic intensities and store them in a 30''  ×  30'' grid format, which has several stages: determining the earthquake loss calculation factor, gridding damage probability matrices, calculating building damage and calculating human losses. Then, in the co-earthquake phase, there are two stages of estimating loss: generating a theoretical isoseismal map to depict the spatial distribution of the seismic intensity field; then, using the seismic intensity field to extract statistics of losses from the pre-calculated estimation data. Thus, the final loss estimation results are obtained. The method is validated by four actual earthquakes that occurred in China. The method not only significantly improves the speed and accuracy of loss estimation but also provides the spatial distribution of the losses, which will be effective in aiding earthquake emergency response and rescue. Additionally, related pre-calculated earthquake loss estimation data in China could serve to provide disaster risk analysis before earthquakes occur. Currently, the pre-calculated loss estimation data and the two-phase estimation method are used by the China Earthquake Administration.

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Short summary
The core contribution of this study is a new earthquake disaster loss estimation method for earthquake emergency response based on dasymetric exposure data, which consists of two phases: a pre-earthquake phase and a co-earthquake phase. This method can not only improve the speed and accuracy of earthquake disaster estimation for co-earthquake response, but it also provides the spatial distribution of possible deaths and building damage.
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