A country level physical and community risk index in the Asia-Pacific region for earthquakes and floods

  • Mr James Daniell, Centre for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
  • Dr Katherine Daniell, Centre for Policy Innovation, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT, Australia
  • Assoc Prof Trevor Daniell, School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia
  • Dr Bijan Khazai, Centre for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

The socio-economic situation of countries can aggravate the physical risk of natural disaster impacts, as demonstrated by the impacts of the recent 2010 earthquake on the population and building stock of Haiti. A newly formed global socio-economic indicator database has been produced to allow comparison of countries in terms of their socio-economic situation for use in this risk study. In addition, a global damaging earthquakes database has been created to better understand the historical impact of earthquakes on the Asia-Pacific region. Historical flood impact databases have also been examined. Simplified hazard models have been used in conjunction with historical damage data, added to human exposure. The relative country level rural and urban building inventories and historical building trends are used to define levels of vulnerability, exposure and hazard. From this, physical and community risk indices are derived for the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. It is found that the community risk in developing countries such as Philippines and Indonesia can aggravate the physical risk many times showing the increased need for earthquake and flood risk reduction policy in many Asia-Pacific countries. The physical risk trends show the need for the reduction of physical vulnerability in Australia towards both earthquakes and floods. Trends based on HDI and other indicators within the fields of economy, poverty, demographics, governance and environment are also presented showing the influence of factors to pre-disaster fragility, and post-disaster resilience in developing countries.