Providing a Model for Stability of Communities in Earthquake

Earthquake is one of the most destructive natural events that threats human society and cause the loss of lives and assets. In the past decades, extensive efforts have been conducted to reduce the damages caused by the earthquake and various technical papers, guidelines and codes are published trying to achieve this goal. Observations indicate the formative influence of these efforts and reduction in losses. However, despite these progresses, the main problem is why there are significant differences in performance of communities in the face of the earthquakes. This issue is properly mentioned by Ambraseys (2010)that compares death toll caused by two different earthquakes with the same magnitude in New Zealand (3/9/2010) and Haiti (12/1/2010). Considering the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and the number of deaths resulting from the earthquake (DRE) for shallow earthquakes occurred during the period 1980-2009of 6.8<M<7.9. Ambraseys concluded that “the hypothesis that there is an effect of corruption on the number of people killed by earthquakes is valid” (Ambraseys, 2010).This point of view to the earthquake damages should be extended and the effect of various socio-economic indicators that can represent the attitude of the societies to earthquake should be examined on the amount of earthquake losses. Some of these socio-economic indicators are listed below:-Corruption Perceptions Index (CIP)-Gross Domestic Product (GDP)-Urban to Rural Population Ratio-Human Development Index (HDI)-GINI Index-Rate of Literacy-Research and Development Expenditure-Number of Hospital Beds per Capita-Unemployment-Inflation Consumer Prices-Mobile Cellular Subscriptions-Government Effectiveness-Industrial Production-Road Density-Government Revenue-Time required to start a business-Voice and AccountabilityThe main step to gain the above-mentioned purpose is to define a new model in the society level, which makes it possible to compare the performance of various communities. The proposed comparative model makes it possible to investigate the effect of various socio-economic indicators on the stability of community and the amount of losses due to the earthquake in an appropriate manner. In order for the proposed model to become comparative, various modification factors are defined based on the intensity measure of the earthquake, population affected by the earthquake and the time of occurrence of the earthquake throughout the day. Finally, the proposed model is implemented on the earthquakes worldwide during 1995 to 2013.