|
Earthquake Hazard Assessment and Risk Management
in Asia and Pacific
Serguei Yu. Balassanian,
Asian
Seismological Commission, IASPEI;
Armenian Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior;
13
Vardanants Str. Yerevan, Republic of Armenia
Tel/Fax: 374 154 4524, email: SBal@themail.com
Abstract
With
the increasing scale of disasters projected for the 21st century by
the experts, the ASC should play an important role as a catalyst and coordinator
for the Earthquake Hazard Assessment and Risk Management Strategy developed and
implemented in Asia-Pacific region for prevention of the earthquake hazards
impact on population, vital infrastructure and property. The ASC activity for
risk reduction in Asia and Pacific should take into account the above listed
problems, additionally taking into consideration the big difference between
developed and developing countries. The level of efforts focused on mitigation
of strong earthquakes’ effects in developing countries has remained rather low
and constant, while the level of efforts focused on the same problems in
developed nations has permanently increased. The full implementation of the
Seismic Risk Reduction Strategy directly depends on economic resources of the
country and policy in understanding of the existing problem. However, the key
issues of the Strategy with very limited resources can be implemented in any
country where the understanding of the problem on political level exists. The
proposed approach has been successfully implemented in Armenia during the last
11 years after the devastating Spitak earthquake in 1988 (Balassanian, 2000,
[1]). This unique experience in creation of comprehensive and advanced Seismic
Protection System in the developing country with very limited economic recourses
has been widely recognized and rewarded by the UN-Sasakawa Award in 2002 (Balassanian,
2002) and can be transferred to any developing country in Asia and Pacific. The
ASC should promote the understanding that Earthquake Hazard Assessment and Risk
Management in Asia and Pacific are immediately linked to the ability of the
country to function appropriately for the guarantee of business continuity and
hence economic growth and the potential of any Asian and Pacific country to
prosper and develop. To promote this critical understanding for benefit and
safety in particular for the most vulnerable developing countries the ASC should
undertake practical steps by way of the ASC pilot projects.
Key
words: earthquake hazard, seismic risk reduction,
risk management, ASC pilot projects
1.
Introduction
Asia is
the most populated continent of the Earth, and has a high level of seismic
hazard. Earthquakes are the major threat to the social and economic development
of many developing nations in Asia. Death tolls from the recent earthquakes in
urban areas have been the largest all over the world: the 1976 Tangshan
earthquake in China reportedly killed 250,000 people; the 1990 earthquake in
Tabhas, Iran with 40,000 victims; the 1991 earthquake in Spitak, Armenia with
25,000 victims; the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Japan 5000 victims; the 2000 Taiwan
earthquake, China 6,000 victims; the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, India 17,000
victims. The rapid growth of the Asian population in earthquake prone urban
areas will make such disasters more deadly and more frequent.
With
the increasing scale of disasters projected for the 21st century by
the experts, the ASC should play an important role as a catalyst and coordinator
for the Earthquake Hazard Assessment and Risk Management Strategy developed and
implemented in Asia-Pacific region for prevention of the earthquake hazards
impact on population, vital infrastructure and property.
Summarizing the experiences and achievements of different countries in the field
of seismic risk reduction, the ASC should promote:
-
understanding of the earthquake disaster
reduction as the major priority in regional, national and international
development;
-
understanding of the central importance of
disaster reduction as an essential element of the government policy;
-
partnership establishment between scientific
community, government and public, since effective disaster reduction depends
upon a multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaboration among all concerned
actors;
-
exchange and transfer of up-to-date
scientific knowledge and technology and strengthening of the international and
multidisciplinary cooperation in the field of seismic risk reduction;
-
a move away from disaster recovery oriented
approach towards disaster prevention and preparedness policy;
-
development of the national strategy,
program and legislation for earthquake risk reduction;
-
establishment of the interagency
governmental body on national level, which would act as a focal point for
seismic risk reduction activities, concentrating efforts of all the sectors of
the government and society relevant to seismic risk reduction;
-
development of pilot projects for risk
reduction in Asia and Pacific.
The ASC
activity for risk reduction in Asia and Pacific should take into account the
above listed problems, additionally taking into consideration the big difference
between developed and developing countries. The level of efforts focused on
mitigation of strong earthquakes’ effects in developing countries has remained
rather low and constant, while the level of efforts focused on the same problems
in developed nations has permanently increased.
To fill this critical gap and
increase the ability of each country to reduce its earthquake risk is the
primary goal of ASC.
The Seismic Risk Reduction Strategy should include the following
elements:
-
seismic hazard assessment (SHA);
-
seismic risk assessment (SRA);
-
built environment vulnerability reduction
through seismic codes and standards design, seismic strengthening and upgrading
of existing buildings, seismoresistant construction and control;
-
public awareness increase through education
and training;
-
current seismic hazard assessment, early
warning and notification;
-
rapid loss estimation and emergency response
and rescue operations (disaster management);
-
disaster relief and rehabilitation;
-
insurance;
-
national seismic protection law and
regulations;
-
responsible governmental institution
establishment for the interagency multi-disciplinary seismic risk reduction
management.
The
full implementation of the Seismic Risk Reduction Strategy directly depends on
economic resources of the country and policy in understanding of the existing
problem. However, the key issues of the Strategy with very limited resources can
be implemented in any country where the understanding of the problem on
political level exists.
The key
issues of the Seismic Risk Reduction Strategy are:
-
establishment of the responsible
institution for the Seismic Risk Reduction policy design and implementation;
-
development of the Seismic Risk Reduction
national program, including all the above listed elements with short, middle
and long-term sub-programs adopted by Government;
-
development of the National Seismic
Protection Law, adopted by Parliament;
-
internationalization of the national Seismic
Risk Reduction program to involve for funding different international sources
as well;
The
proposed approach has been successfully implemented in Armenia during the last
11 years after the devastating Spitak earthquake in 1988 (Balassanian, 2000,
[1]). This unique experience in creation of comprehensive and advanced Seismic
Protection System in the developing country with very limited economic recourses
has been widely recognized and rewarded by the UN-Sasakawa
Award in 2002 (Balassanian, 2002) and can be transferred to any developing
country in Asia and Pacific.
The ASC
should promote the understanding that Earthquake Hazard Assessment and Risk
Management in Asia and Pacific are immediately linked to the ability of the
country to function appropriately for the guarantee of business continuity and
hence economic growth and the potential of any Asian and Pacific country to
prosper and develop.
To
promote this critical understanding for benefit and safety in particular for the
most vulnerable developing countries the ASC should undertake practical steps by
way of the ASC pilot projects.
2.
Practical Steps for Earthquake Hazard Assessment and Risk Management in the
Asian and Pacific Countries: ASC pilot project- proposals.
Considering the existing background of earthquake hazard assessment and risk
management in Asia and Pacific, the ASC pilot projects for the Asian and
Pacific countries should be focused on the following issues:
Further
improvement of the seismic hazard evaluation in developing countries.
Seismic
risk assessment: regional and local contexts.
Seismic
risk reduction in the selected most vulnerable urban areas.
Current
Seismic Hazard Assessment for early warning and notification.
The
implementation of the ASC pilot projects will promote the ASC further capacity
building through networking and cooperation.
2.1
Further Improvement of the Seismic Hazard Evaluation in Developing Countries.
Background
The
further improvement of the seismic hazard evaluation in the Asian and Pacific
countries is the initial step in the general strategy of risk reduction.
Earthquake hazard is usually
expressed in probabilities of occurrence of certain earthquake (strong ground
shaking) in a given time frame. Hazard assessment commonly specifies 90% of non-exceedance
of certain ground motion parameter for an exposure time of 50 years,
corresponding to a return period of 475 years.
We are
considering that the further improvement of the seismic hazard evaluation in the
Asian and Pacific countries should be based on the GSHAP approach, which was
designed to provide a useful global seismic hazard framework and serve a
resource for any national and regional agency for further detailed study
applicable to their country needs.
The
brief review of the current status of seismic hazard assessment on national
level shows that there are considerable differences between countries, from
Buhtan, Nepal, Vietnam and Laos, which do not have national seismic hazard maps
to China, India and Russia with several
generations of
national hazard maps, and to
Japan, which produces hundreds of seismic hazard maps throughout the
seismological history in Japan. Thus, there are different objectives for further
improvement of the seismic hazard evaluation in the Asian and Pacific countries,
depending on the level of development of country.
For developing countries the
main objective is to design national seismic hazard maps in accordance with
international standards.
For developed countries the main
objective is the further improvement of the national probabilistic SHA maps in
three directions:
1)
increase the quality and availability of the
basic data needed for the seismic hazard assessment;
2)
further development of the advanced
methodology for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, based on improved models
of earthquake source, occurrence and ground motion, and seismic hazard
calculation taken into account uncertainties in the input data;
3)
minimize the level of uncertainties
considering their aleatory and epistemic nature.
Necessity to increase the quality and availability of the basic data
becomes obvious from comparison of existing instrumental earthquake’s
catalogues, covering only a few last decades with the recurrence of large
earthquakes in active areas may need characteristic period of hundreds or
thousands of years. Thus, the sufficient background, historical and
prehistorical information based on geological, seismotectonic, paleo-seismological,
geomorphological and other data is needed to complete the large earthquakes
statistics, covering their recurrence period for the improvement of quality of
seismic hazard assessment.
Further development of the advanced methodology
is needed for improving earthquake source models, occurrence models, ground
motion models and seismic hazard calculation approaches.
Besides
the well known permanent (static) line source and areal source models, the
earthquake source models improvement should be considered to discuss the
temporary (dynamic) sources of the potential seismic hazard, which are defined
as crust stress high gradient zones (Balassanian, et al. [2])
Different types of occurrence models such as Poissonian, time-predictable,
slip-predictable and renewal have been used for the PSHA. But it must be
recognized that the largest earthquakes in many cases occur at a rate per unit
time that is different than predicted by existing occurrence models (Mayer-Rosa
1999, [3])
The grand motion models are
usually attenuation relationships that express ground motion as a function of
magnitude and distance. Many of ground motion attenuation relationships have
been determined using two different ways: empirical, based on previously
recorded ground motions, or theoretical based on seismological models to
generate synthetic ground motions that account for source, site and path
effects.
The
further development of ground motion models is needed in order to take into
account:
1)
different tectonic environments, because the
shallow crustal earthquakes in active tectonic regions, shallow crustal
earthquakes in stable continental regions and subduction zone earthquakes give
rise to different ground motion attenuation relationships (Abrahamson and, 1997,
[4]);
2)
style of faulting, because reverse and trust
earthquakes tend to generate larger Pik Ground Accelerations (PGA) and
high-frequency Spectral Acceleration (SA) than strike slip and normal
earthquakes (Abrahamson and,1997,[5]);
3)
rupture directivity(Somervill et al., 1997,
[6]);
4)
nonlinear effects in near source zone in
case of large earthquakes (Campbell and,1994, [7]);
5)
site classification ranging from qualitative
descriptions of the near-surface material to very quantitative definitions
based on shear-wave velocity (Dobry et al.,2000, [8]);
6)
nonlinear dynamic properties of the soil at
the local (receiver) sites (Stepp et al., 2001,[9]).
Further improvement of seismic
hazard calculation should be based on consideration of uncertainty. The first
step in this direction is already done by McGuire (McGuire, 1993, [10])
To
minimize the level of uncertainties
the nature of uncertainties should be taken into account. Because the aleatory
uncertainty is naturally inherent in the earth and earthquake process, which in
principle, cannot be reduced with additional data or information, the main focus
should be placed on minimization of epistemic uncertainty.
Significant advances in the development of the methodology for quantifying
epistemic uncertainty in seismic hazard, due to incomplete knowledge about
earthquakes processes and ground motion attenuation and to incomplete data
available for evaluating these processes, have been made during the last 20
years. These developments, based on weighting alternative interpretations of the
seismotectonic environment of a sity by multiple experts should be continued.
The
objective of the proposal is to design the national seismic hazard maps for
most vulnerable developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
In
order to achieve the objective the following tasks should be solved:
-
to select the most vulnerable 3-5 countries
in Asia and Pacific;
-
to establish the multinational research
team, consisting of the best national multi-disciplinary experts from different
organizations, representing national, governmental, NGOs and private sectors,
and of the well-known leading experts from the Asian and Pacific countries for
the advanced seismic hazard evaluation technology transfer into national
seismological practices;
-
to develop an initial realistic national
standard for SHA, based on the quality and availability of the basic data needed
to achieve the sufficient level of hazard mapping as close to international (GSHAP)
standards as possible;
-
to map probabilistic seismic hazard mapping
in accordance to the selected national standard.
The
duration of the project should be 3 years.
The
expected results are the following:
-
developed SHA map, adopted by Government;
-
improved national building codes and
regulations;
-
effective land use and planning;
-
developed emergency preparedness and
response plans;
-
economic forecasts;
-
insurance planning and development;
-
housing and employment decisions;
-
earthquake risk assessment and mitigation
planning.
The
end-users are national, state and local governments, decision-makers,
engineers, planners, builders, emergency response organizations, universities
and general public.
2.2 Seismic Risk Assessment in
the Asian and Pacific countries.
Background
The
next important step after the earthquake hazard evaluation in the general
strategy of seismic risk reduction is the seismic risk assessment.
The
risk is expected losses of lives, persons injured, property damaged and economic
activity disrupted due to earthquake. The seismic risk composed of seismic
hazard, vulnerability and the elements at risk (population, structures,
utilities, systems, socio-economic activities and many other) for which loss can
be calculated.
The
brief review of the current status in national seismic risk assessment shows
that there is not even a global framework for seismic risk assessment to serve
as a resource for any national and regional agency to develop further detailed
study applicable to their country needs. And the difference between developing
and developed countries is bigger than in case of seismic hazard assessment.
The
noticeable risk analysis has been done mainly in frame of the UN-RADIUS
(Okazaki, 2000, [11]), WSSI (Shah, 1999,
[12]), Oyo Corporation and
Geohazards International (Tucker et al.,1994, [13]), Earthquakes and Megacities
(Green et al., 1993 [14]) and some other Initiatives. But it still remains a
small drop in ocean of needs for seismic risk assessment in the Asian and
Pacific countries.
Thus,
there are different objectives for the further improvement of the seismic risk
assessment in developing and developed countries.
For developing countries there
are two objectives:
1)
to design a regional seismic risk assessment
map to provide a regional framework, and serve as a recourse for any national
and regional agency for further studies applicable to their needs;
2)
seismic risk assessment for the most
vulnerable urban areas in the Asian-Pacific countries.
For developed countries the main
objective is the further improvement of the seismic risk assessment on the
national level in the following directions:
1)
increase the quality and availability of the
basic data needed for the comprehensive seismic risk assessment;
2)
further development of the advanced
methodology for comprehensive seismic risk analysis and assessment;
3)
minimize the level of uncertainties.
To
increase the quality and availability of the basic data, additional studies
should be done as the following:
-
to complete the databases for ground shaking
and collateral (maps of a topography, soil property, groundwater table, fault,
liquefaction potential, landslide potential and rapture zone) analysis;
-
to complete inventory of built environment
and population, including databases of taxable buildings, non-taxable buildings,
extended lifelines, modal lifelines; census and business/ economic data;
Further development of the
advanced methodology should be based on the consideration and reduction of
uncertainties in the various methodology components and in final risk assessment
as well as on GIS-based modeling of the ground shaking and collateral hazards,
complete inventory of built environment and population, damage and loss
estimations. One of the main problems in future development of the advanced
methodology is that the models are not easily adopted when large regions or
megacities need to be evaluated. Often data are missing requiring that
simplifying assumptions be made.
For
minimizing the uncertainties the further research as the following is needed:
-
structure response in case of multi-source
earthquake (for example the Spitak earthquake, Armenia, 1988) (Balassanian et
al.,1995, [15]);
-
soil-structure nonlinear interaction;
-
non-linear dynamic response of structure
under ground shaking and collateral hazards.
In
general, uncertainties reduction can be achieved through the development of more
realistic damage and loss models that include calibration with empirical data.
The
objectives of the proposal are:
1.
To design a seismic risk assessment map for
the Asian-Pacific region.
2.
Seismic risk assessment for the selected
most vulnerable urban areas in the Asian-
Pacific region.
In
order to achieve the objective 1 the following tasks should be
solved:
-
to establish the steering committee for
project management;
-
to select regions and test areas under the
coordination of regional centers, based on GSHAP experience;
-
to develop the design principles for
regional seismic risk assessment based on GSHAP approach ;
-
to select a simplified methodology for
seismic risk assessment (for example, Balassanian 1994 et al., [16]) taking into
account equivalent availability for each country of the multidisciplinary basic
data needed for seismic risk assessment: seismic hazard (based on GSHAP regional
PSHA maps), vulnerability, and the main elements at risk (constructions and
population);
-
to develop and adopt regional seismic risk
assessment program, working plan and management principles.
For the
achievement of the objective 2 the following tasks should be solved:
-
to select the most vulnerable (3-5) urban
areas in the Asian-Pacific region, taking into consideration the probability of
the next strong earthquake, vulnerability of the given urban areas, scale of
possible loss and preparedness to disaster;
-
to establish a multinational working group,
consisting of the best national multi-disciplinary experts from different
organizations, representing governments, NGOs and private sectors from the
Asian-Pacific countries for the advanced technology transfer into national
practice;
-
to develop multi-approaching standards aimed
to achieve the international standards through several approaches (initial,
middle, final) based on availability of basic data for comprehensive seismic
risk assessment;
-
to select as an initial standard the
regional seismic risk assessment approach;
-
seismic risk mapping for the selected urban
areas in accordance to the adopted national standards.
The
duration of the project should be 3 years, with parallel
implementation of the objectives 1 and 2.
The
expected results are the following:
-
developed seismic risk assessment map for
the Asian-Pacific region, (as an initial step) and then expand in the second
step to cover continent by continent and finally the globe;
-
developed SRA maps for the selected most
vulnerable urban areas of the Asian-Pacific region, as an initial step and then
expand in all the vulnerable urban areas of the region;
-
developed bases for risk mitigation program
and disaster management plans for the Asian and Pacific countries and the
selected most vulnerable urban areas;
-
developed framework for land use and
planning;
-
economic forecasts;
-
insurance;
-
framework for housing and employment
decisions.
The
end-users are national, state and local governments, decision-makers,
engineers, planners, builders, emergency response organizations, universities
and general public.
2.3 Seismic Risk Reduction in
the selected most vulnerable urban areas.
Background
The
background for the project is RADIUS (Risk Assessment Tools for Diagnosis of
Urban Areas against Seismic Disasters) initiative launched by the IDNDR
Secretariat, United Nations, Geneva in 1996, with financial and technological
assistance from the Government of Japan. It aimed to promote worldwide
activities for reduction of seismic disaster in urban areas, which was rapidly
growing in developing countries.
The
direct objectives of the RADIUS were:
-
to develop earthquake damage scenarios and
action plans in nine case-study cities three of which from Asia (Bandung,
Tashkent, Zigong).
-
to develop practical tools for risk
management, which could be applicable to any earthquake-prone city in the world;
-
to conduct a comparative study to understand
urban seismic risk around the world;
-
to promote information exchange for seismic
risk mitigation at city level.
The
direct objectives of the case studies were:
-
to develop an earthquake damage scenario,
which describes the consequence of a possible earthquakes;
-
to prepare a risk management plan and
propose an action plan for earthquake disaster mitigation.
The
case studies aimed:
-
to rise the awareness of the decision makers
and the public to seismic risk;
-
to transfer appropriate technologies to the
cities;
-
to set up a local infrastructure for a
sustainable plan for earthquake disaster mitigation;
-
to promote multidisciplinary collaboration
within the local government as well as between the government offices and
scientists;
-
to promote worldwide interaction with other
earthquake-prone cities.
All the
case-study cities are well equipped with modern infrastructures, but they differ
in l level of understanding of seismic disaster issues.
In Bandung (Indonesia), there is
a single coordinating office for emergency response. Because annual flooding is
the most frequent disaster in the city, the focus is on flood disasters and
seismic considerations were almost neglected. The general awareness of the
citizens and the decision-makers of seismic risk were very low. In contrast
Tashkent has experienced damaging earthquakes, and seismic risk issues are taken
into consideration in urban planning. The level of public awareness is
relatively high.
In
Zigong, the administrative department for earthquake disaster prevention and
mitigation is the Zigong Seismological Bureau. Programs about seismic safety and
countermeasures are shown on TV, earthquake awareness pictures are shown on
street billboards, and information is disseminated through radio and local
newspapers. Consequently, the people of Zigong have a relatively high level of
awareness regarding the possibility of earthquake damage.
In
accordance with RADIUS initiative conclusions the case studies met their goals
to complete the scenarios and the risk management and action plans. (Okazaki,
2000, [11])
However, the RADIUS initiative, as many others very good and useful actions
still remain disposable undertaken efforts unfortunately with short life time
and they cannot trigger the long-term efforts that are required for Seismic Risk
Reduction program implementation.
The
main objectives of the proposing project are:
1.
To develop the Seismic Risk Reduction
Program for the most vulnerable urban areas based on internationally recognized
and tested standards for risk reduction;
2.
To develop a mechanism for triggering the
permanent process aimed to Seismic Risk Reduction Program implementation through
planning, management, research and permanent education.
In
order to achieve the objective1 the following tasks should be solved;
-
to select the most vulnerable urban areas,
where the risk assessment is already done based on RADIUS or any other
initiatives;
-
to establish the multinational working group
consisting of the best national multidisciplinary experts from different
organizations (representing the government, NGOs and private sectors) and the
well-known leading experts from the Asian and Pacific countries for the
advanced seismic risk reduction knowledge transfer into national practice;
-
to develop the advanced Seismic Risk
Reduction program taking into account the national peculiarities of the urban
area based on the experience of RADIUS or other effective initiative.
For
achievement of the objective 2 the following tasks should be solved:
-
to develop the sub-programs and master plans
for each element of Seismic Risk Reduction where the sub-programs and planning
do not exist;
-
to establish an interagency and
multidisciplinary management body on the level of government (national,
regional, local depending on the status of the selected urban area)for Seismic
Risk Reduction program implementation;
-
to develop research programs for each
element of seismic risk reduction, to begin permanent research process in
universities and other research institutions.
-
to develop educational and training programs
for public awareness increase;
-
to establish the permanent educational
process in the selected schools, universities and municipalities.
The
duration of the project should be 3 years.
The
expected results are the following:
-
Developed seismic risk reduction programs
for the most vulnerable urban areas, based on internationally recognized and
tested strategy for risk reduction;
-
Developed mechanism for promoting the
permanent process of risk reduction program implementation through planning
management, research and permanent education;
-
Promoted scientific research in all the
elements of Seismic Risk Reduction, aimed to prepare scientific ground for their
potential funding from potential donors such as local industries, the financial
and insurance sectors, and international aid organizations;
-
Promoted permanent educational process on
the levels of school, university and municipality, aimed to public awareness
increase;
-
Developed sub-programs and master plans for
each element of seismic risk reduction;
-
Established interagency and
multidisciplinary management body on the level of government (national, regional
or local, depending on the status of the selected urban area) for seismic risk
reduction;
-
Strengthening the corporation among the
seismic risk reduction all concerned actor’s, focusing on local participation to
build capacity among the local community.
The
end-users are national, state and local governments, decision-makers,
scientists,
emergency response organizations, citizens, schools and universities, general
public.
2.4 Current Seismic Hazard
Assessment for Early Warning and Notification.
Background
Current seismic hazard
assessment based on intermediate results of earthquake prediction research is
one of the promising elements in Seismic Risk Reduction Strategy for early
warning and notification.
Earthquake prediction is the most complicated problem in seismology. It has two
important aspects: scientific and social. The scientific aspect is
intimately linked to the basic definition of earthquake prediction: type of
prediction (long-term, intermediate-term, short-term, and imminent); general
geodynamic conditions and local geology at the place of earthquake source
location; size of an earthquake, etc. The social aspect is linked to prevention
and protection of society from strong earthquakes, in order to save lives and
protect economic and social assets. Three various points of view summarizing the
scientific achievements in the field of earthquake prediction research in the XX
century should be noted: pessimistic (about 90% of scientists), optimistic
(about 9% of scientists) and realistic (about 1% of scientists). The pessimistic
point of view has been formulated and shared in decreasing order mainly from the
USA to Europe and to Asia. The optimistic point of view has opposite direction –
from Asia to Europe and to the USA in decreasing order. The realistic point of
view has pretty homogenous and diffusive character worldwide. It is shown that
the above listed patterns in evaluation of the earthquake prediction
achievements depend on: earthquake prediction definition and requirements,
degree of country development; the current scientific policy based on general
state policy, priority of the earthquake prediction need for country; personal
understanding, the research and experience of the expert in that field;
experience of majority of experts, general opinion and scientific atmosphere and
emotions.
In last
decade approximately 100 authors published articles about scientific aspect of
the earthquake prediction in reviewed scientific journals, in which they claimed
that they had found various types of precursors before the earthquakes. On the
other hand, several reputed scientists doubt that these or any other precursory
phenomena exist. These doubts and lack of spectacular progress in earthquake
prediction research, as well as exaggerated claims of individual researchers
with low quality standards, have led to a worldwide lull in earthquake
prediction research. Some renowned and respected scientists no longer dare
broach the subject, lest they be attacked by opponents, more or less regardless
of the improvements they may have included in their analysis. This situation is
counterproductive. It stops the possible development of this and other methods
of earthquake prediction and thus may deprive humanity of a tool to cope better
with earthquake disasters. At the same time, in regard to social aspect of the
earthquake prediction research, there is a number of very promising publications
in reviewed scientific journals where authors demonstrate efficiency of using
intermediate scientific results in earthquake prediction research for early
warning and notification. The definite progress in this approach has been made
in China (Zhang Guomin et al.,1997,[17]), Armenia (Balassanian et al.,
2000,[18]) and Island (Thorkelsson 1996, [19]) on the level of the sate
countermeasures undertaken by the governments on the basis of the current
seismic hazard assessment made by the responsible government seismological
agencies.
Taking
into consideration:
-
the importance of the current seismic hazard
assessment, in particular for developing countries, which do not have economic
resources for seismic risk reduction in its full scale, as well as power to stop
earthquakes for several decades to undertake traditional full-scale
countermeasures;
-
the critical need to protect population from
strong earthquakes in particular in the most vulnerable developing countries;
-
the necessity of constructive discussions
the scientific solutions for the current seismic hazard assessment based on high
quality data and objective expertise;
the ASC could take the lead in
current seismic hazard assessment for early warning and notification.
The
objectives of the proposal are:
1.
To unite the state-of-the art tools and
intellectual capacities of different countries into virtual network for fast,
high and professional level of assessment of the current seismic hazard in any
country of the region requesting the ASC independent expertise;
2.
To develop a sophisticated formation system
for the current seismic hazard assessment based on the existing and developing
real-time, multidisciplinary well organized national networks for earthquake
prediction researches;
3.
To maintain high scientific standards and
strong expertise of the scientific outputs.
4.
To develop an expert system for the current
seismic hazard assessment, early warning and notification based on
multidisciplinary retrospective analysis of all the seismic events occurred and
occurring in the region.
For the successful current
seismic hazard assessment the following key requirements are needed:
-
a multi-parameter unified real-time
monitoring network;
-
a specific site selection, including
highly-sensitive energy-active points (Balassanian, 2000 [18]) for setting of
the multi-parameter observation stations;
-
well studied region from geological,
geophysical, seismological and seismotectonic point of view with complete data
bank;
-
the state-of-the-art equipment, hardware and
software for data processing and analysis;
-
highly professional staff and research team.
In
order to achieve the objectives, the following tasks should be solved:
-
to select several test sites in accordance
with the above stated requirements for various seismotectonic conditions
representing collision, subduction and transform fault zones in different parts
of the Asian-Pacific region;
-
to unite the selected test sites into
transnational, real-time multidisciplinary monitoring network, based on the
state-of-the-art and reliable communication links among selected test sites for
on-line data transmission and receiving;
-
to establish the data acquisition processing
and analysis centers at each of the selected test site;
-
to develop an expert system for the current
seismic hazard assessment;
-
to develop a protocol for real-time data
exchange and fast expertise for the current seismic hazard assessment;
-
to develop an early warning and notification
expert system based on the current seismic hazard assessment.
The
project will consist of three phases (I-III)
Phase I
is the pilot project, where the main participants are countries, where the
well-organized monitoring networks already exist (Armenia, Australia, China,
Japan and others) and where relatively small amount of funds will be needed for
some improvement of the existing network up to above stated requirements and for
solving the main objectives of the project. The duration of phase I is 3
years.
Phase
II is the core project where the main participants are the same as in the pilot
project plus other countries that have monitoring networks, which should be
significantly improved in accordance with the above stated requirements. The
duration of the phase II is 3 years.
Phase III is the full project
where the participants are all the countries located in the seismically active
zones of the Asian-Pacific region and which would like to join this initiative.
The
duration of the phase III is 4 years. The duration of the whole project
(I-III) is 10 years.
The research team.
Taking into consideration the
context of the proposal, the research team should be composed of proponents of
the earthquake prediction research, of critics skeptical that any precursors
exist and neutral scientists.
This
make up is essential for the working process. The moderating presence of the
neutral parties can be very beneficial, because the two sites in a debate about
the current procedure run the risk of getting entrenched in a way that hinders
progress.
The
expected results are the following:
-
developed virtual network of high level
experts for the current seismic hazard assessment in any country requiring the
ASC independent expertise;
-
established united multidisciplinary
real-time transnational monitoring network producing high quality data for the
current seismic hazard assessment;
-
developed expert systems for the current | 
