Evaluation method on seismic risk of substation in strong earthquake area.

Frequent earthquakes in strong earthquake areas pose a great threat to the safety operation of electric power facilities. There exists a pressing research need to develop an assessment method for the seismic risk of substations, i.e., the hubs of power system networks. In this study, based on Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA), Probabilistic Seismic Demand Model (PSDM) and reliability theory, a vulnerability model for a substation is obtained, based on considering the relationships between Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) and four seismic damage states (complete, extensive, moderate, and slight.) via a probabilistic approach. After an earthquake, the scope of influence and PGA distribution are evaluated using information recorded by the seismic observation stations, based on using interpolation or an empirical formula for the PGA attenuation. Therefore, the seismic risk can be evaluated by combining ground motion evaluation and the pre-built vulnerability model. The Wuqia- Kashgar area of Xinjiang was selected as the study area; it is an Earthquake-prone area, and one of the starting points for new energy transmission projects in China. Under a hypothetical earthquake (MS 7.9), the seismic risk of the substations was evaluated. The results show that: this method is able to give the probabilities of the four damage states of the substations, four substations close to the epicenter only have a probability of slight damage (45%-88%) and other substations are safer.

La educación antisísmica con estudiantes de medicina a través de un proyecto comunitario / Anti-seismic education of medical students through a community project

La prevención ante los desastres acaecidos por sismos constituye una problemática en determinadas regiones vulnerables en Cuba, y una prioridad en la formación de estudiantes de medicina. En este trabajo, las opiniones de los autores se fundamentan en la influencia que tiene un proyecto comunitario, para actuar ante situaciones sísmicas, en la preparación de los estudiantes de medicina, pues favorece una mayor calidad profesional y contribuye a enriquecer su labor preventiva con la población. Como parte del proceso, participaron 46 estudiantes de cuarto año de la Facultad de medicina No. 1, de Santiago de Cuba, en el período comprendido entre septiembre de 2016 a febrero de 2018(AU)

Prevention of earthquake disasters is a problem in certain vulnerable regions of Cuba, and a priority in the training of medical students. In this work, the authors' opinions are based on the influence that a community project has, to act in seismic situations, in the preparation of medical students, since it favours a higher professional quality and contributes to enriching their preventive work with population. As part of the process, 46 fourth-year students from the Faculty of Medicine No. 1, Santiago de Cuba, participated in the period from September 2016 to February 2018(AU)

Assessment of community vulnerability and medical surge capacity in a foreseeable major disaster.

OBJECTIVE: Developing an adequate disaster response capacity involves an assessment of available resources in areas that are vulnerable to disaster. Here, we sought to evaluate the gap between predicted damage in a foreseeable major earthquake versus existing municipality-level resources in Tokyo, Japan. METHODS: Our study focused on the 53 municipalities in Tokyo to evaluate the relationships between the predicted number of severe casualties per 1,000 population from a future earthquake, community characteristics, and inpatient bed supply in local hospitals. Correlation analysis and supply-demand balance estimations were carried out at the municipality level, and the results were geographically visualized using choropleth maps. RESULTS: The correlation analysis showed that higher casualties were correlated with municipalities with faster population increase, higher taxable incomes, lower unemployment rates, and higher bed volumes in disaster base hospitals. Under a maximal damage scenario in a future earthquake, we predict a shortage of 2,780 beds for the treatment of severe casualties across Tokyo. Even under a scenario of cooperation among neighboring municipalities, a shortage of 7,107 beds would remain. CONCLUSIONS: Tokyo is located in a zone where major earthquake damage is anticipated. Cooperation between neighboring municipalities may not suffice to address the undersupply of beds during the acute phase of a disaster. Hence, existing disaster preparedness plans require further reinforcement with a focus on local vulnerabilities.

Application of improved ELM algorithm in the prediction of earthquake casualties.

BACKGROUND: Earthquake casualties prediction is a basic work of the emergency response. Traditional forecasting methods have strict requirements on sample data and lots of parameters are required to be set manually, which can result in poor results with low prediction accuracy and slow learning speed. METHOD: In this paper, the Extreme Leaning Machine (ELM) is introduced into the earthquake disaster casualty predictions with the purpose of improving the prediction accuracy. However, traditional ELM model still has the problems of poor network structure stability and low prediction accuracy. So an Adaptive Chaos Particle Swarm Optimization (ACPSO) is proposed to the optimize traditional ELM's network parameters to enhance network stability and prediction accuracy, and the improved ELM model is applied to earthquake disaster casualty prediction. RESULTS: The experimental results show that the earthquake disaster casualty prediction model based on ACPSO-ELM algorithm has better stability and prediction accuracy. CONCLUSION: ACPSO-ELM algorithm has better practicality and generalization in earthquake disaster casualty prediction.

Emerging Trends and New Developments in Disaster Research after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake.

On the tenth anniversary of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, investigating the evolution of disaster science is worthwhile and can be used to improve the future execution of disaster risk management. Based on more than 55,786 articles on the relative topic of "Disaster" derived from the Web of Science Core Collection from 1999⁻2017, this study employs CiteSpace and Google Earth to identify and visualize the spatial distribution of publications, bursts of keywords and categories, highly cited references, and interdisciplinary levels and then identify the emerging trends of disaster research over the past 20 years. The results show that the earthquake indeed jumpstarted a massive wave of disaster research around the world and increased international cooperation over the last decade. However, in terms of both the quantity and quality of publications in disaster research fields, China is lagging behind the U.S. and European countries. Moreover, although designing disaster prevention and mitigation strategies is a new popular field of disaster science, geological environment changes and geologic hazards triggered by earthquakes are more popular research topics than disaster emergency and recovery. In addition, the transdisciplinary level of disaster science increased after the earthquake. This interdisciplinary characteristic of disaster science gradually increased in popularity, which demonstrates that people can learn from catastrophes. These emerging trends could serve as a scientific basis to clearly understand disaster science progress over the last 20 years and provide a reference for rapidly identifying frontier issues in disaster science.

Historical Earthquakes and Their Socioeconomic Consequences in China: 1950⁻2017.

Understanding the spatiotemporal pattern of historical earthquake disasters and resultant socioeconomic consequences is essential for designing effective disaster risk reduction measures. Based on historical earthquake disaster records, this study compiles a Chinese earthquake disaster catalog (CH-CAT) that includes records of 722 earthquake disasters that occurred during 1950⁻2017 in the mainland of China. This catalog includes more complete data records than other existing global earthquake databases for China as a whole. Statistical results demonstrate that the number of earthquake disasters and the resultant direct economic losses (DELs) exhibit significant increasing trends (p < 0.01) over the studied 68-year period. Earthquake-induced deaths vary greatly between individual years and exhibit no significant trend. The Qinghai-Tibet seismic zone is the area with the highest frequency of earthquake disasters and the largest accumulated DELs, whereas the North China seismic zone is associated with the highest number of deaths. Among the 722 earthquake disasters, nearly 99.0% of deaths and 95.0% of DELs are attributable to 1.8% and 3.9% of the earthquake disasters, respectively. Approximately 54.2% of recorded earthquake disasters have earthquake magnitude (Ms) values between 5.0 and 5.9, while earthquake disasters with Ms greater than or equal to 7.0 account for 88.5% of DELs and 98.8% of deaths. On average, earthquake-induced DELs and deaths increase nonlinearly with increasing Ms per earthquake. DELs have a positive correlation with deaths and casualties on a logarithmic scale. This study further discusses that during different stages of socioeconomic development, changes in both exposure and vulnerability may be the major factors leading to change differences in earthquake-induced socioeconomic consequences. This study is a beneficial supplement to the global earthquake database and is useful for calibrating global or regional empirical loss models.

Developing messages for protective actions to take during earthquake shaking

This document provides guidance on developing messages about what people should do during earthquake shaking to protect themselves from injury or death. The document refers to this behavior as protective action. The guidance is not designed to advocate one protective action over another. Rather, it describes a process to use and key considerations for creating effective protective actions messages that serve different contexts. This document focuses on actions to take during an earthquake, because information on what to do before and after is available elsewhere and generally better agreed upon. In contrast, messaging agencies around the world advocate a variety of different protective actions. Messages for what to do during earthquake shaking form one part of a broader earthquake safety messaging campaign, as Figure 1 shows. Protective actions messages must complement mitigation and preparedness efforts that will make people much safer from earthquakes in the long term. This document is the result of the project "Guidance on Developing Messages for Protective Actions to Take during Earthquake Shaking" funded by USAID/OFDA. There is no single perfect protective action message, for any nation, or for any jurisdiction. Jurisdictions have different customs, beliefs, buildings, geology, and capacities, and therefore different messaging needs. It is absolutely essential that people understand their specific circumstances and situations and make decisions based on that understanding.

Implementation workbook: developing messages for protective actions to take during earthquake shaking

GeoHazards International (GHI) prepared the tools in this workbook as part of a USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)­funded project to implement protective actions guidance developed in an earlier USAID/OFDA project. The implementation project took place in Anse­a­Veau, Nippes Department, Haiti. The Government of Haiti selected this location because the south peninsula region had not had prior earthquake safety programs, and an ongoing earthquake swarm was causing great concern among local residents. Earlier versions of the worksheets in this document were used in the Anse­a­Veau implementation, and subsequently revised based on that experience. The examples in this workbook were prepared based on the Anse­a­Veau implementation.

Actitudes y conocimientos ante la ocurrencia de sismos en personal de salud en Ica, 2016 / Attitudes and knowledge to the occurrence of earthquakes in health personnel of Ica, 2016

Introducción:El ser humano está expuesto a muchas amenazas según el entorno que lo rodea; el Perú no es la excepción; las experiencias ante las consecuencias de los desastres originados por la naturaleza que vienen ocurriendo desde los últimos años, han puesto en relieve la vulnerabilidad de la salud pública, donde las instituciones incumplen con las acciones de prevención y la poca preparación de la población para hacer frente a estos desastres naturales. En ello como respuesta, el sector salud forma parte de la toma de decisiones dentro del comité operativo de emergencia para la coordinación intersectorial en situaciones de crisis, donde se altera el equilibrio de la naturaleza y fraccionan al grupo humano residente en distintos escenarios. Objetivos: Determinar la relación entre las actitudes y conocimientos ante la ocurrencia de sismos en estudiantes de medicina, y médicos del Hospital Regional de Ica. Material y métodos: Nivel de investigación relacional, tipo descriptivo, prospectivo y transversal. Realizado mediante una encuesta auto aplicada. Análisis mediante SPSS 24.0 aplicando regresión lineal y chi-cuadrado (p < 0.05) y análisis multivariado mediante el modelo de regresión logística.Resultados: Como factores de riesgo se tiene el grado académico, la convivencia con personas con discapacidad, la falta de experiencia en un sismo, no pertenecer a una brigada, no haber llevado un curso en prevención de desastres y el bajo conocimiento en el tema. (AU)

Introduction: The human being is exposed to many threats according to the surrounding environment and Peru is no exception. The experiences of the natural disasters that have been occurring since the last years have highlighted the vulnerability of public health, where institutions fail to comply with prevention actions and the lack of preparedness of the population to cope to these natural disasters. As a response, the health sector is partofthedecision-makingprocesswithintheemergencyoperationalcommitteeforintersectoral coordination in crisis situations, where the balance of nature is altered and the human group residing in different scenarios is divided. Objetive: To determine the relationship between attitudes and knowledge regarding the occurrence of earthquakes in medical students and physicians at the Regional Hospital of Ica. Materials and Methods: Relational research level, analytical type, prospective and transversal. Made through a self-administered survey. Analysis using SPSS 24.0 applying linear and chi-square regression (p <0.05) and multivariate analysis using the logistic regression model. Results: Risk factors include academic degree, coexistence with people with disabilities, lack of experience in an earthquake, not joing to a brigade, not having taken a course in disaster prevention and low knowledge in the subject. (AU)