| Abstract | (unpublished)
Earthquakes have been recognised as major natural hazards with the potential to cause loss of life, property damage, and social and economic disruption in Canada. Still, most
risk and emergency managers lack the necessary tools and guidance to adequately undertake rigorous risk assessments. Recently, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has adopted Hazus, a standardized best-practice methodology developed by the US Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for estimating potential losses from common natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. Although developed for use in the USA, Hazus has all the advantages of being a potentially useful tool for
quantifying risks from natural hazards in Canada. Hazus combines science, engineering knowledge, and mathematical modelling with geographic information systems technology to estimate physical damage and economic and social losses. The ground shaking
is defined with four parameters: spectral accelerations at 0.3s and 1.0s, and PGA and PGV. It can be defined as deterministic with given hypocenter and magnitude, or as probabilistic with a return period of 1/2475y according to the seismic hazard
recommended by the current NBCC 2010. In addition, seismic hazard data are provided for return periods of 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, and 2000y. The earthquake model also considers permanent ground displacement due to landslide, liquefaction, and
fault rupture susceptibilities. The assets at risk consist of built environment and demographics. The building inventory data are grouped into two main categories: occupancy and structural type. They can be provided as aggregated data on the census
track level or as specific data with proper coordinates. Central to the vulnerability modelling is the concept of fragility curves defined as plots of a measure of the intensity of the seismic motion versus the expected damage for a given structural
type. Depending on the severity of the resulting transient or permanent ground deformation, five potential damage states (none, slight, moderate, extensive, complete) are employed to estimate the amount of structural damage and consequent economic
and social losses. This presentation focuses on some of the typical features of the Hazus earthquake model. The input requirements and visual outputs are discussed over an example of a recently completed regional seismic risk assessment study in the
corridor between Ottawa and Quebec City. The future plans for an interactive web platform for seismic risk assessment with embedded hazard and exposure layers on national scale are also presented. |
| Summary | (Plain Language Summary, not published)
Recently, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has adopted Hazus, a standardized best-practice methodology developed by the US Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) for estimating potential losses from common natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. This note focuses on some of the typical features of the Hazus earthquake model. The input requirements and visual outputs are
discussed over an example of a recently completed regional seismic risk assessment study in the corridor between Ottawa and Quebec City. |