Overview

Earthquakes are among the most destructive of natural hazards. In the last decade alone, they have killed tens of thousands of people and imposed tremendous costs, as buildings, lifelines, facilities and livelihoods are destroyed and damaged in moments. They are also emotionally wrenching, with survivors facing grief, pain, fear, economic distress and, often, lingering guilt. To understand earthquakes as hazards requires a familiarity with both the natural forces at work and the social factors that make human beings vulnerable. An international, interdisciplinary team draw on their work in several countries to examine the earthquake as a hazard. The first section presents work on the physical dynamics of earthquakes, including original papers on ground motion, earthquake progression and the redistribution of seismic stress, palaeoseismicity and the debate on earthquake prediction. The second section provides an overview of earthquake-resistant construction and current work on seismic engineering for a variety of structure and lifeline types. The third section addresses social vulnerability to earthquakes, including individual perception and response, economic impacts and systematic inequities in vulnerability. The fourth part of the anthology deals with emergency planning and disaster response, while a final section takes up humanistic approaches to cultural and ethical issues in earthquake prone regions. Earthquakes takes a much-needed interdisciplinary and international approach to this complex natural and social phenomenon. The collection will provide earthquake researchers with access to the best of the current work in a wide variety of related disciplines. It will also prove an invaluable resource for emergency managers and planners who need a comprehensive resource on a hazard that they must address in a particular place and in a particular but theoretically-grounded manner.

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9780415223324

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