Methodologies for Evaluating the Socio-Economic Consequences of Large Earthquakes

None of the evaluation methodologies reviewed contain a complete, integrated methodology for evaluating the socio-economic impacts of large earthquakes. Most of these approaches are fairly narrow in scope and consider only a portion of the full impacts of large earthquakes. Most of these approaches are based heavily on informed opinion of experienced experts, but only a few state assumptions and relationships between variables explicitly.

We believe that three approaches (ATC-13, ATC-25, and the VSP Benefit-Cost Model) provide the best methodologies for the quantitative modeling of the socio-economic impacts of large earthquakes. These methods all use quantitative relationships between earthquake intensity,physical damage and socio-economic impacts which arise from physical damage. None of these approaches are comprehensive, but these approaches can be generalized to produce a systematic, comprehensive methodology for evaluating socio-economic impacts.