BACKGROUND This study aimed to assess psychological distress (PD) in earthquake-stricken communities with regard to the extent of property damage for 3 years following the 2004 Niigata-Chuetsu earthquake in Japan. METHODS Subjects were participants of health check examinations in a community near the epicentre, and included 7097 residents (≥18 years) in 2005, 6586 in 2006 and 6698 in 2007. In...

Three studies of site amplification factors, based on the recorded aftershocks, and one study based on strong motion data, are compared one with another and with the observed distribution of damage from the Northridge, CA, earthquake of 17 January 1994 …ML ˆ 6:4†: In the epicentral area, when the peak ground velocities are larger than vm < 15 cm=s; nonlinear response of soil begins to distort t...

Few studies have been conducted to systematically assess post-earthquake condition of structures using vibration measurements. This paper presents system identification and finite element (FE) modeling of an 18-story apartment building that was damaged during the 2015 Gorkha earthquake and its aftershocks in Nepal. In June 2015, a few months after the earthquake, the authors visited the buildin...

Objective: “5.12” Wenchuan Earthquake killed 70,000 people and left more than 90,000 people injured seriously. This study was to analyze the wound features and early treatments in Wenchuan earthquake victims and investigate treatment strategies in major disasters, to provide a reference to future disaster rescue. Methods: Total of 1420 earthquake patients who were admitted to Deyang People’s Ho...

Fragility curves are very useful in quantifying the physical and economic damage of buildings that have undergone an earthquake. This paper presents the development of analytical fragility curves representative of mid-rise residential structures built with reinforced concrete, taking into account the specific structural characteristics of Algerian buildings. The derivation of the analytical fra...

Post-earthquake repair costs are important for evaluating the performance of new bridge design options and different existing bridge configurations in the next major earthquake. Hazard and structural demand models provide information on the probabilistic structural response during earthquakes. Damage and decision models are needed to link the structural response to decisions on bridge repair ac...

BACKGROUND On March 11, 2011, a massive undersea earthquake and tsunami struck East Japan. Few studies have investigated the impact of exposure to a natural disaster on preschool children. We investigated the association of trauma experiences during the Great East Japan Earthquake on clinically significant behavior problems among preschool children 2 years after the earthquake. METHOD Partici...

This paper provides a comparison between Earthquake Loss Estimation (ELE) software packages and their application using an “Open Source Procedure for Assessment of Loss using Global Earthquake Modelling software” (OPAL). The OPAL procedure was created to provide a framework for optimisation of a Global Earthquake Modelling process through: 1. overview of current and new components of earthquake...