Development of earthquake lossmap for Europe

For almost real-time estimation of the losses after a major earthquake in the Euro-Mediterranean region, the Joint Research Area-3 (JRA-3) component of the European Union (EU) Project Network of Research Infrastructures for European Seismology - NERIES foresees (at several levels of sophistication): Finding the most likely location of the source of the earthquake using regional seismotectonic data base; estimation of the spatial distribution of selected site-specific ground motion parameters; correlation/verifyication/enrichment of the estimated ground shaking information with the available on-line strong motion data; and estimation of physical damage and casualty distributions. These LossMaps will provide the required vital information within minutes after an earthquake to European emergency response agencies, in a manner similar to the United States Geological Survey (USGS)'s Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) system. A methodology that incorporates the regional dependencies and sources of uncertainty stemming from ground motion predictions, fault finiteness, site modifications, inventory of elements subjected to the hazard, and the vulnerability relationships is under preparation with researchers from Imperial College, NORSAR and ETH-Zurich. A pilot application is established for Turkey that encompasses the gridded earthquake source, Quaternary, Tertiary, Mesozoic (QTM) geological classification and physical and demographic inventory mapping for the whole country. Within the scope of this study, loss estimations were computed for the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake using several approaches and comparisons made with observed values. The LossMap tool will be available for the first estimation of damage immediately after an earthquake in Turkey by the end of 2007 and for the whole Euro-Med region by the end of 2009.