Journal of Natural Disaster Science

MODELLING THE NUMBER OF CASUALTIES FROM EARTHQUAKES

Elena SAMARDJIEVA*
National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, Tsukuba
and
Kazuo OIKE
Department of Geophysics, Faculty of Science, Kyoto University

(Received 14 February 1992 an in revised form 30 July 1992)

Abstract

The number of people killed and injured by strong earthquakes during the last 100 years was investigated using data from all over the world and separate data on earthquake disasters in Japan. Considering the difference in the social conditions of life in the first half of this century and now, we divided the time period into two parts: before 1950 and after. Some differences in the distribution of human losses for both periods are specified. An evaluation of the total number of victims based on released seismic energy and population density in areas with different degrees of macroseismic intensity was made. Correlations between number of casualties and the magnitudes of earthquakes for certain categories of population density were obtained. They form a quantitative scale model of disasters that can be used to make an approximate estimation of the number of killed and injured people that can be used for prevention and risk reduction purposes.

Key words

number of casualties, magnitude, population density