Dimensions of Earthquake Disaster in Urban Areas (original) (raw)

In disaster management, earthquakes are one of the leading causes of death. The aftermath of such phenomena can be abated if proper actions take place before the onset of the earthquake. Various sectors in a country are responsible for managing earthquakes but lack of knowledge about the positive effects of their actions makes them reluctant to do so. Stabilizing houses and structures, positioning humanitarian goods, retrofitting transportation links, and devising a disaster response plan can help save more lives. Of course, these actions are separate projects with defined budgets which are assigned to different sectors, but coordination of them is necessary. To highlight the effects of pre-disaster actions on recovery costs, Recovery Indexes are introduced which show the state of the city after the earthquake. Also a model is proposed to calculate the recovery costs of an earthquake when different actions have taken place. The results show how significant any pre-disaster action can be on the recovery cost and the essentiality of taking actions before it is too late.