Building for safety from earthquakes: the global challenge

Abstract

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about progress in global earthquake safety. Drawing on personal experience and insights from earthquakes of the last 30 years, a survey of experts and practitioners from around the world, and our review of global building types and standards, we highlight key areas of progress and concern. We present empirical evidence to describe the successes of earthquake engineering and disaster preparedness, as well as the failures that may have had tragic consequences, and how we can learn from them. What we have learned is that technological advancements and knowledge cannot be relied on alone to deliver earthquake safety. With affordable protection actions, buildings collapsing and people dying from earthquakes are largely preventable, and perhaps of equal importance is advocacy that complements building codes. Advocates in the field have shown how a careful balance of local knowledge, cultural sensitivity, wit, communication skills, and resolve is the essence that shifts the status quo. Based on our assessment of earthquake initiatives and the actions of game changers around the world, we point to some of the actions that have made a difference in their local context.

Biography

Professor Emily So is a chartered civil engineer with specialist experience in loss assessments and earthquake engineering.  She is Director of the Cambridge University Centre for Risk in the Built Environment.  She has actively engaged with earthquake‐affected communities in different parts of the world, focusing on applying her work towards making real‐ world improvements in seismic safety. She has been involved in interdisciplinary and international collaboration through her work with the UK’s Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), Global Earthquake Model (GEM), the World Bank and the USGS, and actively participates in the international debate on the way forward for disaster risk mitigation