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Regime of earthquake hazards in 1900-1996 in connection with the social-economical situation and forecast of number of victims and looses
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, 4th EEGS Meeting, Sep 1998, cp-43-00169
- ISBN: 978-94-6282-127-9
Abstract
lt was shown [1] that number of victims and looses from natural disasters increase with time in astrong non-linear manner. This phenomenon of considerable social and economical significance is explained, as a rule, as resulting from the increasing rate of natural disasters. This growth could be caused by the rapid increase of the Earth's population and/or by the degradation of environment due to the excessive anthropogenic pressing. Using data on earthquake losses, we intend to show, that the increase in the number of victims and looses is connected mainly with the power-Iaw distribution of numbers of victims and looses. Thus, the non-linear growth of earthquake victims can be explained essentially by a stationary mode. The similar result was shown earlier for the case of number of homeless from major floods [2].The power-Iaw distribution (the Pareto law) has an infinite mean value if a power index is less than 1. The power index for distributions of looses from earthquakes changes from 0.7 to 0.9. Similar values are typical for looses from other natural disasters and, thus, the mean value of the Pareto distribution with such indices is infinite. This result is in a cIear contradiction with the finiteness of the Earth's population and the total value of technosphere. Thus, the power-Iaw distribution has to have the cut-off point, where the probability of large losses begins to decline (decrease) considerably from the power-law. The character of distribution of numbers of victims and looses from earthquakes below and above the cut-off points is investigated and the prognosis of looses for 50 years time interval is presented. The dependenee between economical losses and victims is discussed also.