An analysis of seismic risk from a tourism point of view.

Global awareness of natural calamities increased after the destructive Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, largely because many foreigners lost their lives, especially in Thailand. This paper explores how best to communicate the seismic risk posed by different travel destinations to crisis management personnel in tourists' home countries. The analysis of seismic risk should be straightforward enough for non-specialists, yet powerful enough to identify the travel destinations that are most at risk. The output for each location is a point in 3D space composed of the natural and built-up environment and local tourism. The tourism-specific factors can be tailored according to the tourists' nationality. The necessary information can be collected from various directories and statistics, much of it available over the Internet. The output helps to illustrate the overall seismic risk conditions of different travel destinations, allows for comparison across destinations, and identifies the places that are most at risk.

Maximum likelihood estimation of seismic hazard for Sweden

The maximum magnitude, the activity rate, and the Gutenberg-Richter b parameter as earthquake hazard parameters, have been evaluated for Sweden. The maximum likelihood method permits the combination of historical and instrumental data. The catalog used consists of 1100 earthquakes in the time interval 1375-1989. The extreme part of the catalog contains only the strongest historical earthquake, whereas the complete part is divides into several subcatalogs, each assumed complete above a specified threshold magnitude.(AU)