Study On Rapid Assessment Method For Destructive Earthquake Casualty

Earthquake is one of the most threatening natural disasters throughout ancient and modern history in China and abroad, and each destructive earthquake has caused great disaster to human beings. Located between the circum-Pacific seismic belt and Eurasian seismic zone, China is one of the countries most affected by earthquakes, where seismic activities have characteristics such as high frequency, strong intensity, shallow seismic source and wide distribution. Destructive earthquakes occur frequently, which causes a great loss to our people’s lives and property.In recent years, destructive earthquakes occurred frequently in Mainland China, such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and Yushu earthquake in 2010. After destructive earthquakes, timely life-rescue and reducing casualties are the most important tasks of the earthquake relief. The potential death from earthquakes is an important basis for government departments to launch emergency response plan and to adjust the rescue resources. Sudden destructive earthquakes often cause communication itterruptions and infrastructure severely damaged, therefore basic information of the earthquake stricken area is difficult to obtain at the first time after earthquakes. Research on earthquake casualty rapid assessment method provides reference for government decision-making. Rapid assessment method for earthquake casualty is studied in this dissertation, mainly including the following contents:1. Background and significance of this research are introduced. Eight destructive earthquakes are reviewed, which occurred after the founding of New China.2. The development of earthquake casualty assessment research at home and abroad is introduced, and the earthquake casualty evalution methods are divided into three categories described in detail, and several methods are used for Baotou earthquake and Lijiang earthquake in 1996.3. The source and treatment of earthquake disaster data are introduced, and the influencing factors such as magnitude, earthquake time, epicentral intensity, population density, area, earthquake-induced geological disaster are analyzed, which provides fundamental basis for the establishment of earthquake casualty assessment model.4. Two fitted curves and relationships respectively between earthquake casualty and magnitude, epicentral intensity are obtained. Other influencing factors such as earthquake time, population density, and earthquake-induced geologic disaster are taken into consideration. Finally two models repectively based on magnitude and epicentral intensity are established. Using these models to evaluate earthquake casualty of twenty typical earthquakes occurred in China, the evaluation results are compared with the real earthquake casualties’ data, which proves that the models have good reliability. It can provide a reference for earthquake casualty assessment.