Earthquake statistics

Earthquake statistics reveal that about 50% of those inside a collapsing building will be killed, either immediately or as a result of injuries sustained. Other data are lacking, but one could assume a similar percentage for people inside buildings that collapse as a result of blast. This assumption is supported by the fact that, in both cases, the event is sudden and unexpected, so there is neither a place nor the time to find other shelter. 

Complex Systems are systems that comprise many interacting parts with the ability to generate a new quality of macroscopic collective behavior the manifestations of which are the spontaneous formation of distinctive temporal, spatial or functional stmctures. Models of such systems can be successfully mapped onto quite diverse real-life situations like the climate, the coherent emission of light from lasers, chemical reaction-diffusion systems, biological cellular networks, the dynamics of stock markets and of the internet, earthquake statistics and prediction, freeway traffic, the human brain, or the formation of opinions in social systems, to name just some of the popular applications. 

Therefore, in this technical note another option for the earthquake analysis is introduced. Different from the existing approach previously mentioned, the alternative is an application of the Weibull distribution to earthquake statistical studies. The details of the methodology and a case are given in the following. 

Experiments motivated by the study of earthquake statistics were performed by Daniels, Hayman, Ducloue, and Foco [74-76] on slowly sheared (at constant volume) photoelastic granular aggregates. The experiments visualized both... 

The second stage was a statistical analysis of the data available from the NGSDC database and several other smaller databases to extract the frequency-magnitude (f-M) relations for earthquakes originating in widely different regions of the earth. 

Nature of climate. Consider seasonal and daily temperature variations, dust, fog, tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes. Define duration of conditions for design. Determine from U.S. Weather Bureau yearly statistics for above, as well as rainfall. Establish if conditions for earthquakes, hurricanes prevail. For stormy conditions, structural design for 100 miles per hour winds usually sufficient. For hurricanes, winds of 125 miles per hour may be design basis. 

A dynamic statistical approach is used to predict dynamic stresses in a hyperboloidal cooling tower due to earthquakes. It is shown that the configuration associated with one circumferential wave is the only one which is excitable by earthquake force and that the first mode of such configuration is dominant. An equivalent static load is calculated on this basis. Numerical data presented give coefficients for equivalent static loads, natural frequencies of cooling towers, and static stresses for a seismic load. 21 refs, cited. 

Global statistics show that floods are the most frequently recorded destructive events, accounting for about 30% of the world s disasters each year. The frequency of floods is increasing faster than any type of disaster. Much of this rise in incidence can be attributed to uncontrolled urbanization, deforestation, and the effects of El Nino. Floods may also accompany other natural disasters, such as sea surges during hurricanes and tsunamis following earthquakes (FEMA, 2006d). 

Recent publication of world fire statistics reveals that costs of fires currently runs around 1% of GDP in most advanced countries. Deaths and losses in the United States tend to be the most extreme with annual losses of lObn/year [224], The annual review performed by Munich Re of world disaster losses reveals that world-wide forest fire losses alone exceeded 5.5bn and insured losses exceeded 2.5bn during 2003. Such losses exceed the sum of all losses from volcanic eruptions, hailstones, flash floods, Tsunamis, landslides, avalanches, water drainage, frost, and local and winter storms combined (Of course the Baran earthquake, the European heat wave, floods, and severe and tropical storms individually exceeded forest fire losses, Munich Re [437],... 

T. Utsu Statistical features of seismicity. In International handbook of earthquake and engineering seismology, Vol. 81A, ed by the Int l Assoc, Seismol. Phys. Earth s Interior (Academic Press, 2002) pp 719-732... 

Pressure diffusion was simulated for a number of statistical parameter sets using 5 realisations in each case. The number of realisations was constrained by the high CPU time, however, it is still possible to see how changes in statistics are influencing earthquake evolution (but not to derive accurate population statistics). 

In the next section Cl and WI indices obtained after five different earthquakes are reported. The earthquakes occurred in Erzincan 1992, Diizce 1999, Bingol 2003, Wenchuan 2008, and Haiti 2010. It must be emphasized that (1) the damage statistics included only a fraction of the buildings at each site, and (2) structural and architectural properties of the buildings varied from site to site, as did the earthquake demand. The Wenchuan data were limited to a university campus. No collapses occurred. Collapses occurred in Haiti, but they were not reported, because of lack of information on the buildings that collapsed. 

Fractures in Longmen mountain area played an important role of geomorphology formation. In the west of Yingxiu-Beichuan fracture, geomorphology is almost the high mountain which the elevation is up to 4000 m-5000 m (Zhao X.L et al., 1994). After Wenchuan earthquake, the density statistics of geo-hazards (Huang R.Q et al., 2009) showed that below 650 m the density was only 0.06/km, and more than 2500 m the geohazards rarely occurred which was only 0.05/km. The elevation distribution of geo-hazards statistics showed that the mainly development elevation was... 

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