Science for Earthquake Risk Reduction

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 21st century the impacts of earthquakes and other geohazard-related disasters have risen rapidly: the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and tsunamis, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and induced landslides, the 2010 Haiti earthquake followed by a cholera outbreak, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunamis and flooding followed by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and the 2015 Nepal earthquake and landslides (e.g., Ismail-Zadeh et al., 2014; Cutter et al., 2015). The vulnerability of our civilization to geohazard events is still growing partly due to the increase in the number of vulnerable objects and clustering of populations and infrastructure in the areas prone to geohazard events.Understanding of disaster risk comes from recent advances in natural and social sciences, engineering, and applied research. Particularly, advances in lithosphere dynamics (e.g., Cloetingh et al., 2020), based on Earth observations, analyses, and modelling, improve the understanding of hazardous event occurrences. Earthquake assessments are supported by scientific evidences from seismology, geology, geodesy, geophysics, electromagnetism, hydrology, soil science, and by models and forecasting of extreme events. Engineering and science-based technological development contribute to improvements of earthquake-resistant constructions. Studies of physical and social vulnerabilities, exposure, capacities, and resilience help in assessing disaster risk and in preparing, responding, and adapting to possible disruptions due to disasters.Meanwhile, despite the advances and knowledge accumulated, disasters continue affecting societies. Reducing disaster risks using scientific knowledge is a foundation for sustainable development (Beer and Ismail-Zadeh, 2003; Cutter et al. 2015). Our knowledge about earthquakes and their interaction with human systems is lacking in some important areas and is being challenged by the unforeseen or unknown repercussions of a rapidly changing and increasingly interdependent world (Ismail-Zadeh et al., 2017). Earthquake HazardsAlthough the majority of world greatest earthquakes occur at subduction zones (Stern, 2002), large earthquakes happen also in highly-populated continental collision or rift zones, such as the Tibet-Himalayan, Apennines, south-eastern Carpathians, and Caucasus 2012;2020) orogenic regions, the New Madrid (Braile et al., 1982) and the Kutch (Gupta et al., 2001) rift zones. According to the global risk analysis, an area inhabited by more than one billion people is estimated to undergo significant ground shaking by earthquakes for the next 50 years with probability 0.1 (Dilley et al., 2005). Tectonic stress generation (e.g.

Natural hazards and climate change are not drivers of disasters

“…In addition, policymakers should promote forensic investigations of disasters happened in order to penetrate deeply into their fundamental causes and to understand why and how NHs turn to become disasters (Ismail-Zadeh 2020b ). According to Burton ( 2010 ), the aim of such investigations should not be to hunt “witches”, as anyway responsibility for disaster losses is widely spread over institutions and over place and time.…”