Study on earthquake losses assessment model considering the uncertainties of earthquake location and other factors

The uncertainties, such as the rapid earthquake locations, the seismic motion attenuation, the vulnerability of buildings to earthquakes and so on, exist and have not been well estimated in the earthquake damage and losses assessment process. Such uncertainties often reduce the accuracy of the results. In this paper, a new model for fast assessment of earthquake damage and losses considering the uncertainties is developed. Based on this model, the quantitative assessment results considering the uncertainties can be obtained. A group of rapid seismic location data and relevant macroscopic epicenter ones from 81 earthquake events since 1990 in main land China are collected and the probability distribution model of the deviation of rapid seismic location from the macroscopic epicenter is obtained. Uncertainties such as the seismic motion attenuation, the vulnerability of buildings to earthquakes are also discussed and estimated by properly designing of algorithms. The model was proved to be valid by the tests of several strong earthquake cases occurred since last ten years. According to this model, a fast earthquake damage and losses assessment software based on GIS (FEDLES 2003 for Windows) has been developed and applied in practice. The main principle of the earthquake damage and losses assessment model considering the uncertainties, the software used in GIS environments and the main case study results are presented in the paper.