A dasymetric data supported earthquake disaster loss quick assessment method for emergency response in China.

Improving earthquake disaster loss estimation speed and accuracy is one of key factors in effective earthquake response and rescue. The presentation of exposure data by applying a dasymetric map approach has good potential for addressing this issue. With the support of 30" * 30" areal exposure data (population and building data in China), this paper presents a new two-phase earthquake disaster loss estimation method for emergency response situations. This method has two phases: a pre-earthquake phase and a co-earthquake phase. In the pre-earthquake phase, we pre-calculate the earthquake loss related to different seismic intensities and store them in a 30" * 30" grid for mat, which has four stages: determining the earthquake loss calculation factor, gridding possible damage matrixes, the building damage calculation and the people loss calculation. The dasymetric map approach makes this possible. Then, in the co-earthquake phase, there are two stages of estimating loss: generating a theoretical isoseismal map to depict the spatial distribution of the seismic intensity field; then, using the seismic intensity field to extract statistics of disaster loss from pre-calculated loss estimation data to obtain the final estimation results. The method is validated by four actual earthquakes that occurred in China. The method not only significant improves the speed and accuracy of loss estimation, but gives spatial distribution for the loss, which will be effective in aiding earthquake emergency response and rescue. Additionally, re lated pre-calculated earthquake loss estimation data in China could serve to provide disaster risk analysis before earthquakes happen. Currently, the pre-calculated loss estimation data and the two-phase estimation method are used by the China Earthquake Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]