Earthquakes occur rapidly and unpredictably, leading to the devastating consequences to infrastructures and innumerable human lives. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) is designed to better understand how to prepare the earthquake emergencies and protect the population. The hazard reduction efforts are taken by governmental agencies, research centers, commissions and councils, professional societies, and businesses.
Among the impediments that limit the successful implementation of hazard mitigation planning, there are a lack of knowledge, effective risk identification and evaluation, and risk-wise behavior. Therefore, specific strategies for addressing these barriers include an interdisciplinary research, effective hazard evaluation strategies, and disaster resilience assessment of risk-wise behaviors.
Earthquake Risk Reduction Challenges and Ways to Address Them
Interdisciplinary Research
The ability to respond to such a disaster as an earthquake depends on the development and readiness of social, technical, economic, and governmental resources. Most importantly, the strengths and weaknesses of these systems should be taken into account while planning response measures. Currently, insufficient attention is paid to the interdisciplinary studies that would explore the ways to establish a connection between the systems and ensure that they can work in cooperation.
For example, the last major earthquake that happened in San Francisco in 1989 shows that there is a lack of coordination across the systems. Those people who need emergency healthcare had to wait for longer times, and those whose housing was destroyed could also receive faster assistance. Since the San Francisco area remains a high risk seismic zone, the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) was established (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, 2008). This is a natural laboratory that researches geological changes, social and economic systems that can be helpful, as well as integrates scholars from various fields.
In the US, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) created a National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program that is expected to prioritize the cooperation between partners. The program includes research, development, and implementation of the response towards earthquakes. According to this document, it is critical to extend the understanding of this disaster and accumulate knowledge to support relevant activities.
For example, technical information is investigated and processed by engineers, which allows for decreasing risks in the built environments (“National earthquake hazards reduction program”, 2020). The experience of the earthquake in Japan in 2011 demonstrates that people received alert messages on their cell phones within a short period of time, while Tokyo residents were notified within one minute (Oskin, 2017). This example clearly shows that advanced technical preparation is critical to minimize the adverse effects of the identified calamity.
Effective Hazard Evaluation Strategies
Earthquakes are non-predictable, yet there are some strategies and tools that are used by scientists to track geological changes and formulate hypotheses about the potential hazards. The case of the 2010 Haiti earthquake can be noted as a vivid example of the underestimated hazard evaluation. The victims of the earthquake in Haiti were hundreds of people, while the number of wounded and homeless was in the thousands (Levie et al., 2017).
In the first hours after the disaster, information about extensive damage came only from Port-au-Prince, the capital of the country. Almost nothing was known about what is happening in the remote and mountainous regions, where the majority of the vulnerable population lives. The residents of Baracoa and the coastal regions were temporarily evacuated (Levie et al., 2017). Nevertheless, within two hours after the earthquake, the threat of a tsunami was canceled, and residents were able to return to their homes.
In large cities, the problem of population vulnerability arises more acutely. The larger the city, the faster it develops and the more complex the problems of improving hazard management and control. The demand for land within and outside the city is giving rise to geographic expansion. A significant part of urban populations can live in the areas that are prone to various types of natural hazards. When a strong earthquake occurs, it is more difficult to carry out the search, rescue, and recovery works with insufficiently substantiated development and construction, considering it from the point of view of the seismic hazard territory.
Today, hazard evaluation strategies use two major approaches, such as a probabilistic analysis and deterministic view (“Disaster Information Management Research Center”, 2020). According to the former, geodetic, geological, and historical evidence is taken into account. As for the latter, the worst scenario of the earthquake is created and estimated to anticipate the risks.
The vulnerability of city housing during the earthquake depends on the type of its infrastructure. For example, brick buildings are more often destroyed by the earth shaking under the influence of strong cables soil, rather than lighter construction and iron-concrete frame structures. Vulnerability assessments of different types of structures are often used to anticipate the impacts of earthquakes. It is used for the forecast of the death toll and those who are likely to be wounded, as long as there is a strong correlation (Davis & Fisk, 2017). As an example, the earthquakes in Japan cause a relatively lower economic burden and fewer deaths compared to the earthquakes that occur in the US. In many cases, the evaluation of the changing city infrastructure contributes to understanding how to design the resilience efforts.
Disaster Resilience Promotion and Risk-Wise Behaviors
Along with the research and development, a special priority is given to risk mitigation strategies that are to be implemented in practice. In this case, a lack of proper strategy implementation leads to a lack of effectiveness and an increased number of system failures. A lack of timely and proper evaluation of risk management is another impediment that is considered in terms of the efforts to minimize the risks (Lesson 4. Building and implementing, 2020). The insufficiency of relevant tools and techniques to assess the preparedness of communities can result in a failure to ensure that people are notified in time and that they can rapidly access safe locations.
Earthquakes have always caused various degrees of mental disorder in people, which can be manifested in improper behavior. Following an acute reaction, a depressive state with general psychological retardation often occurs. As a result, as statistics show, most of the injuries received among the population are due to the unconscious actions of the victims themselves, which is complicated by panic and fear (Davis & Fisk, 2017).
However, it is possible to reduce the traumatic effect of an earthquake on a person by instilling in the population a sense of high civic consciousness, courage, and self-control, responsibility for the behavior of not only oneself and one’s loved ones, but also those around them at the place of residence, work, or study. The upbringing of these qualities is largely facilitated by a well-functioning system of training the population in civil defense, explanatory work among the population, and all-round campaigning and mass work (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, 2008). In the event of an alert or signs of an earthquake, people should be aware that they should act quickly, yet calmly, confidently, and without panic.
The development of basic yet wise behaviors is emphasized by risk mitigation plans. Namely, much help from the population can be provided to medical institutions and the civil defense medical service in maintaining normal sanitary and living conditions in places of temporary settlement (in tent camps or anti-seismic buildings). It is necessary to contribute to the prevention of outbreaks in such places of infectious diseases, which are usually companions of natural disasters.
In order to prevent the emergence and spread of epidemics, all anti-epidemic measures should be strictly followed, including vaccinations and taking medications that prevent diseases (“Disaster Information Management Research Center”, 2020). It is also critical to carefully follow the rules of personal hygiene and make sure that all family members follow them, reminding neighbors and surrounding people of this.
Conclusion
To conclude, it is clear that despite the constant work towards improving the earthquake risk mitigation planning, the current level of preparedness remains insufficient. The main obstacles that prevent the effective design and implementation of risk response strategies are limited research and development, underestimated hazard risk evaluation, and a lack of risk-wise behaviors. The official documents and scholarly studies show that global organizations understand the need to address the discussed impediments based on a greater focus on interdisciplinary research, population education, and more elaborate risk evaluation. The examples mentioned in the paper contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the barriers to effective risk mitigation and the ways that can be used to minimize them.
References
Davis, C., & Fisk, J. M. (2017). Mitigating risks from fracking-related earthquakes: Assessing state regulatory decisions. Society & Natural Resources, 30(8), 1009-1025.
Disaster Information Management Research Center. (2020). Web.
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. (2008). Earthquake risk reduction: Addressing the unmet challenges. Web.
Hazard mitigation planning. (2020). FEMA. Web.
Lesson 4. Building and implementing a community hazard mitigation plan. (2020). FEMA. Web.
Levie, F., Burke, C. M., & Lannon, J. (2017). Filling the gaps: An investigation of project governance in a non-governmental organisation’s response to the Haiti earthquake disaster. International Journal of Project Management, 35(5), 875-888.
National earthquake hazards reduction program. (2020). FEMA. Web.
Oskin, B. (2017). Japan earthquake & tsunami of 2011: Facts and information. Live Science. Web.