Spatiotemporal changes in both asset value and GDP associated with seismic exposure in China in the context of rapid economic growth from 1990 to 2010

Abstract

Accurate exposure estimation is essential for seismic risk assessment. Recent rapid urbanization and economic growth in China have led to massive spatiotemporal changes in both the asset value and GDP exposed to seismic hazards. Using available GDP data, the asset value dataset produced by Wu et al (2014a) and spatial disaggregation technology, gridded maps of GDP and asset value are overlaid with the latest seismic map to investigate spatiotemporal changes in economic exposure in the most seismically hazardous areas (MSHAs) in China in 1990China in , 2000China in and 2010 We found that 15.4% of China's asset value and 14.1% of China's GDP were located in MSHAs in 2010, and the asset value and GDP exposed to MSHAs reached 15.9 trillion CNY and 6.2 trillion CNY, respectively, with average annual rates of increase of 14.4% and 11.3% over the two decades. The evidence of increased exposure provides valuable information regarding whom or what risk managers should give the most attention based on the economic exposure changes in earthquake-prone areas of China. Notably, the North China seismic belt, which is associated with the largest economic exposure to earthquakes and a rapidly increasing rate of economic exposure compared to those in other seismic belts, and the Qinghai-Tibet seismic belt, which has the highest earthquake occurrence, are two seismic belts of interest. A more detailed study is required to determine the relationship between increased economic exposure and earthquake disaster losses combined with hazard level and vulnerability. Environ. Res. Lett. 12 (2017) 034002

Rapid Urban Land Expansion in Earthquake-Prone Areas of China

“…Second, we analyzed the dynamics of the spatial patterns of urban land in the MSHAs, which has not been captured by previous studies. Third, we provided an alternative to examining the exposure of urban land to seismic risk in earthquake-prone areas, apart from the exposure of population (He et al 2016) and assets (Wu et al 2017) to seismic risk.…”

Assessment of Flood Risk Exposure for the Foshan-Zhongshan Region in Guangdong Province, China

“…The annual GDP data at county-level and city-level covering the study area has been collected from the Guangdong Statistical Yearbooks Database (GSYD, http://stats.gd.gov.cn/) for 2015-2017. This is further disaggregated based on the three main macro-economic sectors (primary, secondary and tertiary sectors) using the land use data as a proxy following [8,33]. Figure 3a shows the land categories of the study area based on the 2014 dataset from the Atlas of Urban Expansion, NYU.…”

“…Thus, evaluation of flood risk is often done at a macro-level, particularly for larger areas (e.g., regional-level and larger) and uses proxies such as GDP and/or general building stock information as measures of the potential impact on the overall economic output and asset values. A number of recent studies at the national and global scales have used GDP as the main socioeconomic exposure for natural hazard risk evaluation [6][7][8]. As GDP is a widely reported economic indicator, evaluating the GDP at risk can provide a holistic view that reflects both the direct and indirect losses as arising from the wider impact of economic and societal disruptions.…”

Changes of Population, Built-up Land, and Cropland Exposure to Natural Hazards in China from 1995 to 2015

“…China is also facing great risks of earthquakes (He et al 2016;Huang et al 2019). Wu et al (2017) concluded that roughly 15% of China's asset values and 14% of GDP were in areas prone to earthquakes. Regarding the global integrated assessment of multiple hazards, Shi et al (2015) developed a total risk index and a multi-hazard risk index to map the risks for population and property.…”