Seismic Risk Assessment: What Are We Missing?

Synopsis

This presentation addresses some of the current and future challenges related to seismic risk assessment.

Chapter 1: The fellowship of the risk assessment

In an ideal world there would be reliable, accurate and up-to-date hazard, vulnerability and exposure models to compute the impact from earthquakes. In the real world, these datasets are often incomplete, biased and obsolete.  Managing exposure information with a poor spatial resolution is one of the most challenging tasks in seismic risk assessment. This part of the seminar will illustrate a workflow for testing the sensitivity of risk estimates to the spatial resolution of exposure data for European countries.

Chapter 2: The Two Times (present and future)

The people, structures and systems in our urban environment are increasing rapidly due to economic, social and demographic factors. Socio-economic development and the enforcement of design regulations may lead to the improvement of housing conditions, changes in the seismic vulnerability and an increase in the economic value of the assets. This part of the seminar will present how risk assessment can consider these dynamic drivers in order to provide effective long-term information to support mitigation strategies for today and tomorrow.

Chapter 3: The Return of The Urban Risk

Past earthquakes near urban centres have proven particularly catastrophic due to the concentration of population and wealth. In this part of the seminar, a global urban risk indicator will be presented, in which 4000 urban centres have been classified according to their vulnerability using high-resolution satellite imagery from 1975 to 2010, and combined with a mosaic of seismic hazard models to compute a uniform risk index. Population and wealth projection models were then used to determine which settlements are likely to become a major focal point of earthquake risk in the forthcoming decades.

About the speaker

Jamal Dabbeek – EUCENTRE

Dr Jamal Dabbeek is a researcher in seismic risk at the European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering (EUCENTRE). He is currently working on the development of the new European Seismic Risk Model (ESRM20). His research focuses on exposure models for multi-hazard risk, and the application of earth-observation for developing high-resolution exposure models that account for population dynamics.

Alejandro Calderon – Global Earthquake Model

Dr Alejandro Calderon is a structural engineer who worked for several years in the private sector in design and construction of civil and industrial structures. During his master and PhD studies at the University of Pavia he developed high-resolution exposure models for the residential, commercial and industrial sectors in Central America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. Today he is a seismic risk engineer for the Global Earthquake Model Foundation.

Vitor Silva – Global Earthquake Model

Dr Vitor Silva is the Risk Coordinator at the Global Earthquake Model Foundation and an Associate Professor at the University Fernando Pessoa at Porto, Portugal. He has coordinated several regional and international projects involving partners from the scientific community, governmental organisations and the private sector, that resulted in multi-hazard models for vulnerability and risk assessment. Dr Silva has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals and his contributions have been recognized by awards from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the European Geoscience Union.

Registration

Please join the meeting via Teams* by clicking on this link. No registration is required. The meeting will be recorded.

Further information

This online meeting is organised by Young SECED. For further information, please contact Fiona Hughes (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

* Microsoft Teams is freely available on all major platforms, including Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS. To download and install the software, follow this link. SECED is not sponsored by or otherwise affiliated with Microsoft, and we do not endorse any Microsoft products. 

Event Details

Event Date 10/03/2021 1:00 pm
Event End Date 10/03/2021 2:00 pm