ResilienceRisk management strategies to help communities deal with earthquakes

Published 27 November 2017

As much as humanity tries, the attempt to avoid natural disasters sometimes seems almost futile. Be it a tornado, hurricane, earthquake or wildfire, everyone, at some point, will likely be affected by the results of a natural disaster. But the task of the people in each instance of a disaster is to return to a sense of normalcy, to get back to living life as closely to how they had lived before the natural disaster occurred. To do that means dependency on the infrastructure of their community, where the resumption of interrupted electrical power or the water supply is crucial to the recovery efforts. How quickly communities are able to become operational is directly proportional to the strength of the infrastructure in that community and the efficiency of the risk management plan in place designed to deal with such disasters.

As much as humanity tries, the attempt to avoid natural disasters sometimes seems almost futile. Be it a tornado, hurricane, earthquake or wildfire, everyone, at some point, will likely be affected by the results of a natural disaster.

That was never more evident than this summer, when the Texas Gulf Coast, Florida and Puerto Rico were crushed by some of the worst hurricanes and flooding ever seen. At the same time, Central Mexico was hit hard by strong earthquakes, and Northern California was scorched by one of the worst wildfires the area had ever seen.

Within the past month, a 6.5 magnitude quake hit the coast Costa Rica and a 7.3 magnitude earthquake killed more than 500 along the Iran/Iraq border. In the United States, a 4.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California.

In most instances of natural disasters, as soon as the disastrous events subsided and the safety of citizens was as secure as possible, the focus turns immediately to recovery. Millions of people are left to return to homes scorched, flooded or levelled, to return to businesses that resembled nothing like which they’d left behind while seeking shelter.

But the task of the people in each instance is to return to a sense of normalcy, to get back to living life as closely to how they had lived before the natural disaster occurred. To do that means dependency on the infrastructure of their community, where the resumption of interrupted electrical power or the water supply is crucial to the recovery efforts.

How quickly communities are able to become operational is directly proportional to the strength of the infrastructure in that community and the efficiency of the risk management plan in place designed to deal with such disasters. TTU says that improving those risk management strategies to shorten business and household disruptions as much as possible is the focus of a research project involving a professor in the Texas Tech University Jerry S. Rawls College of Business.