DisastersThe contribution of geophysics to disaster planning

Identifying natural hazards is only a part of what the field of geophysics should do, analysis suggests, and effective disaster risk reduction strategies integrate many different experts on community level.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters often showcase the worst in human suffering — especially when those disasters strike populations which live in rapidly growing communities in the developing world with poorly enforced or non-existent building codes.

Last week in Cancun, a researcher from Yale-National University of Singapore (NUS) College in Singapore presented a comparison between large-scale earthquakes and tsunamis in different parts of the world, illustrating how nearly identical natural disasters can play out very differently depending on where they strike.

An American Institute of Physics (AIP) release reports that the aim of the talk at the 2013 Meeting of the Americas, which was sponsored by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), was to focus on the specific role geoscientists can play in disaster risk reduction and how their work should fit in with the roles played by other experts for any given community.

“To reduce the losses from these disasters, a diverse group of researchers, engineers, and policy makers need to come together to benefit from each other’s expertise,” said Brian McAdoo, professor of science at Yale-NUS College. “Geophysicists play a crucial role in natural hazard identification and determining the key questions of, how often does a geophysical hazard affect a given area and how big will it be when it hits?” McAdoo said. “We need to be aware of how this information is incorporated into the disaster planning architecture.”

In his talk, McAdoo presented case studies that he and his colleague Vivienne Bryner compiled comparing death counts and economic fallout following geophysical events of similar magnitude in areas with different levels of economic development.

What their analysis shows is that deaths tend to be higher in poor countries exposed to severe natural disasters because of existing socioeconomic, environmental, and structural vulnerabilities. At the same time, economic losses tend to be higher in developed nations, but developing countries may be less able to absorb those economic losses that do occur.

As an example, he pointed to the earthquakes that hit Haiti, San Francisco, and Christchurch and Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2010, 1989, and 2010-11. While the quakes were nearly identical in magnitude, the consequences of these natural disasters were remarkably different.

Some 185 people died in the 2011 Canterbury earthquake, which was preceded by the larger Christchurch quake in 2010 in which nobody died. Both quakes and their aftershocks cost New Zealand about $6.5 billion, which was approximately 10-20 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). The 1989 San Francisco earthquake killed 63 people, and it cost $5.6 billion (the equivalent of about $10 billion in 2010 dollars). The U.S. economy is so large, however, that it only caused a one-tenth of one percent drop in U.S. GDP. The 2011 earthquake in Haiti, on the other hand, killed some 200,000 people and resulted in economic losses approaching an estimated $8 billion, which is more than 80 percent of Haiti’s GDP.

To address such disparities, McAdoo advocates what is known as Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) decision making — a framework for finding solutions to best prepare for natural disasters, lessen their impact, and sensibly engage in post-disaster reconstruction. For such planning to work, he said, it must be broad-based.

“We won’t ever be able to prevent disasters,” he said. “The only way we will effectively minimize the effects of hazards is to collaborate across academic disciplines, businesses, governments, NGOs, and perhaps most critically the exposed community.”

“Planning for any sort of natural disaster takes insight into what may be expected, which necessarily includes the important perspective of scientists,” added Philip (“Bo”) Hammer, associate vice president for physics resources at the American Institute of Physics and co-organizer of the session in which McAdoo spoke. “One reason why we organized this session in the first place was to encourage the sharing of such perspectives within the context of how geophysicists can build local capacity, not only for dealing with acute issues such as disasters, but also longer term challenges like building capacity for economic growth.”

— Read more in Brian G. McAdoo and Vivienne Bryner, “Building Capacity for Disaster Risk Reduction” (paper presented by at the 2013 Meeting of the Americas in Cancún, Mexico, 17May 2013)