Synopsis
1 2 Ann Bostrom , Steven P. French 1,2 Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA st The first years of the 21 century brought horrific loss of life and property from earthquakes and tsunamis worldwide. Briefly, the world focused on international disaster prevention, response and recovery. Terrorism loomed large as well, after 9–11, leading to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, and a plethora of related efforts globally. Many of these focus on the built environment. In the U.S. and elsewhere, large-scale infrastructure is stressed; roads, bridges, sewers, and dams built in the last century are deteriorating. Rising population is taxing existing infrastructure more and more as its reliability declines. As a society, we are developing dependencies on new kinds of infrastructure; these too are fragile and may age even less gracefully than sewers and roads. Our infrastructure – including human services, financial, and information – is both increasingly vulnerable and increasingly critical to society. Around the world, we are extending the built environment into incre- ingly fragile natural environments, raising the potential for catastrophe from natural disasters. Social, economic and environmental disparities are also growing between groups, both within the U.S. and between developed and developing countries, putting vulnerable groups even more at risk from extreme events.
From the Back Cover
The papers in this volume integrate results from current research efforts in earthquake engineering with research from the larger risk assessment community. The authors include risk and hazard researchers from the major U.S. hazard and earthquake centers and some from abroad as well as programmers and analysts from leading insurance and risk assessment firms. The introductory chapter provides an historical overview of the rise of risk assessment in the U.S., with particular emphasis on the role of seismic risk assessment. Four key components of risk assessment and decision support software are analyzed in detail in the remaining papers: treatment of uncertainty, loss assessment, modeling of seismic mitigation strategies, and visualization of risk and uncertainty. The volume lays out a road map for future developments in risk modeling and decision support and positions earthquake engineering research within the family of risk analysis tools and techniques.
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