Enrica Verrucci

The value of multiple earthquake missions: the EEFIT L'Aquila Earthquake experience

In November 2012 EEFIT launched its first ever return mission to an earthquake affected site. The L’Aquila Earthquake site was chosen as this is a recent European event of interest to the UK and European earthquake engineering community. The main aims of this return mission were to document the earthquake recovery process and this paper presents an overview of the post-disaster emergency phase and transition to reconstruction in the Aquila area after the earthquake. It takes an earthquake engineering perspective, highlighting areas mainly of interest to the fields of structural/seismic engineering and reconstruction management. Within the paper, reference is made to published literature, but also to data collected in the field during the return mission that would not otherwise have been available. The paper presents some specific observations and lessons learned from the L’Aquila return mission. However, in light of current international efforts in conducting return missions, the paper ends with some reflections on the value that return missions can provide to the field of earthquake engineering in general, based on the EEFIT L’Aquila experience.

Digital engagement methods for earthquake and fire preparedness: a review

Natural or human-made hazards may occur at any time. Although one might assume that individuals plan in advance for such potentially damaging events, the existing literature indicates that most communities remain inadequately prepared. In the past, research in this area has focused on identifying the most effective ways to communicate risk and elicit preparedness by means of public hazard education campaigns and risk communication programmes. Today, web- and mobile-based technologies are offering new and far-reaching means to inform communities on how to prepare for or cope with extreme events, thus significantly contributing to community preparedness. Nonetheless, their practical efficacy in encouraging proactive hazard preparedness behaviours is not yet proven. Building on behaviour change interventions in the health field and looking in particular at earthquakes and fire hazards, the challenging RISK team has reviewed the currently active websites, Web, and mobile applications that provide information about earthquake and home fire preparedness. The review investigates the type of information provided, the modality of delivery, and the presence of behaviour change techniques in their design. The study proves that most of the digital resources focus on a single hazard and fail to provide context-sensitive information that targets specific groups of users. Furthermore, behaviour change techniques are rarely implemented in the design of these applications and their efficacy is rarely systematically evaluated. Recommendations for improving the design of Web- and mobile-based technologies are made so as to increase their effectiveness and uptake for a multi-hazard approach to earthquake and home fire preparedness.

A Review of Current Earthquake and Fire Preparedness Campaigns: What Works?

Current community preparedness campaigns and interventions for natural hazards are not as effective as they aim to be. Research consistently shows that levels of preparedness for natural hazards are low across cultures, despite increased efforts in public hazard education and outreach. Individuals living in areas at risk of natural disasters are not prepared, despite reporting being aware of such risks. This lack of preparedness increases their probabilities of suffering the cascade of ill consequences that follow a disaster. Most of the natural disaster preparedness campaigns rely mainly on the delivery of information, despite studies consistently showing that simply providing the public with information about risk and safety skills is not sufficient to affect preparedness behaviors. Moreover, many of these campaigns lack evaluation and so their success cannot be proven. Research in the fields of social representations, emergency preparedness, and risk communication indicates that a combination of cognitive, emotional, and cultural factors, as well as messaging style, shapes preparedness behaviors. This paper presents the findings of an online search conducted to identify major earthquake and fire preparedness campaigns. The content, design, and theoretical background of these campaigns are analyzed and the results of this evaluation are discussed. This review serves as a guideline for future interventions and campaigns. It aims to contribute to the field of natural hazard preparedness by extracting the components of existing campaigns that have successfully increased preparedness.

EVALUATING THE POST-EARTHQUAKE ACCESSIBILITY OF HOSPITALS FOR MITIGATION STRATEGY DECISION SUPPORT BY FRAGILITY AND CONNECTIVITY MODELLING

The aim of this paper is to present a trivial proof of concept for analysing the impact of post-earthquake damage to lifelines on indicators of social resilience. The conceptual methodology is demonstrated by carrying out a GIS-based analysis of the impact of damage to highways bridges on accessibility to emergency healthcare facilities in the Santa Clarita suburb ofLos Angeles. A magnitude 6.9 earthquake from the Santa Susana fault zone was used as a scenario event with bridge damage predicted using the HAZUS methodology to calculate exceedance probabilities and uniform random sampling to assign damage states. Moderate damage state was used as the threshold for bridge closure. The system performance was measured as the mean travel time between neighbourhoods and the local hospital, weighted to account for population. The distribution of delay amongst the population has also been derived. The analysis was repeated for three further scenarios to identify the critical node for prioritisation of mitigation works by comparing the impacts with the post-earthquake scenario. The analysis was based on the Los Angeles County disaster route network with straight-line approximations for travel distance on local roads. Results were compared to those obtained using the actual path distance on local roads and this showed that interpretation of the results could vary depending on the measurement method and the decision variable used. Therefore straight-line distance is not a safe approximation. The methodology proposed here will be expanded in the future for a more detailed study assessing the riskfrom damage to multiple lifelines and using a wider range of indicators.