Costing out “The Big One”

Citation

(2010), "Costing out “The Big One”", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 19 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2010.07319aab.003

Costing out “The Big One”

Article Type: News items From: Disaster Prevention and Management, Volume 19, Issue 1

A recurrence of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake would result in economic damage of between $39 billion and $328 billion in 2005 dollars, and cause between 3,000 and 24,000 deaths, according to a paper by Kevin Vranes and Roger Pielke Jr in the August 2009 Natural Hazards Review (dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)1527-6988(2009)10:3(84)).

The researchers adjusted earthquake damages over the past 100 years for inflation, increases in wealth, and changes in population. There is no time trend over the period for increasing or decreasing damages, they report. “Since 1900, 13 events would have caused $1 billion or more in losses had they occurred in 2005; five events adjust to more than $10 billion in damages. Annual average losses range from $1.3 billion to $5.7 billion with an average across data sets and calculation methods of $2.5 billion, below catastrophe model estimates and estimates of average annual losses from hurricanes. Fatalities are adjusted for population increase and mitigation, with five events causing over 100 fatalities when mitigation is not considered, four (three) events when one percent (two percent) mitigation is considered. Fatalities in the 1906 San Francisco event adjusts from 3,000 to over 24,000, or 8,900 (3,300) if one percent (two percent) mitigation is considered”, the authors write.

(Abstracted from Natural Hazards Observer, September 2009)