Simple rules for choosing fault planes in almost real-time post-earthquake loss assessments
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Simple rules for choosing fault planes in almost real‑time post‑earthquake loss assessments Mario A. Salgado‑Gálvez1,2 · Mario Ordaz3 · Benjamín Huerta1 · Shri K. Singh4 · Xyoli Pérez‑Campos4 Received: 22 November 2019 / Accepted: 13 July 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Rapid post-earthquake loss assessments require as input the ground motion footprint of the event. These footprints account for the geographical distribution of the seismic intensities, which, at the same time, depend on characteristics of the event such as magnitude, location, depth, focal mechanism, and orientation of the fault plane. For most earthquakes with MW ≥ 5, moment tensor solution and, hence, the characteristics of the two nodal-planes are available. This paper proposes a simple set of rules for choosing the likely fault plane from the two nodal planes, based on a previous characterization of the seismic sources in the area under study that are commonly used in probabilistic seismic hazard analyses. With the selection of the fault plane, a critically required information for generating the parametric ground motion footprint is at hand in a matter of minutes, to be later used in the loss assessment phase. These almost real-time loss assessments are useful for different disaster risk management activities ranging from emergency planning and management to triggers of parametric insurance instruments. The application of this methodology is illustrated for three events, two in Mexico and another in Guatemala, where loss results and their geographical distributions at country level in some cases are highly sensitive to the selection of the correct nodal plane as the fault plane, showing that the proposed rules yield congruent results with the observed and recorded ground motions. Keywords Selecting fault plane from nodal planes · Earthquake risk · Real-time loss assessment · Hazard footprints · R-CRISIS
1 Introduction In the aftermath of an earthquake, there is an increasing need of having estimations of the ground motion intensities in the affected areas, to be used in rapid post-earthquake loss assessments. These risk assessments can provide, in a matter of minutes, valuable information for: (a) emergency planning and management, such as a preliminary estimation of injuries and fatalities, and (b) identification of areas with more collapsed * Mario A. Salgado‑Gálvez [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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buildings, so that personnel and machinery can be timely deployed to them, as well as blocked roads because of debris, so that ambulances can find optimal paths to and from hospitals (Bernal et al. 2017). In addition, and more recently, parametric insurance instruments have been designed so that based on an almost real-time assessment of the earthquake losses, the decision can be made of whether a payout occurs. Furthermore, transparency is needed in the estimation of all components of the risk assessment process (i.e. hazard, exp
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