Collection of Perishable Data from the Nisqually Earthquake for Improving Casualty Loss Estimation Methodologies

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This prooposal has the specific objective to collect perishable data on injuries and related building damage for the recent Nisqually earthquake. The data collected under the proposed effort would enhance existing injury and damage databases compiled for recent U.S. earthquakes (the Whittier Narrows, Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes), and will build on current NSF-funded research (CMS 99-00062 & CMS 00-85314) to establish a standardized earthquake injury categorization scheme, intended to help refine casualty estimation models for earthquake response and mitigation. Injury data will be collected from hospital emergency department logs and abstracted from hospital patient records. Information on building damage and repair cost is collected by various local jurisdictions, and is often aggregated at the county and state level. Detailed data may be available from a number of communities, and this data will be sought for correlation to data on earthquake-related injuries. This information will be matched by address to injury locations to help identify structure-related injury risk factors. Future work for which additional funding will be sought includes: analysis of trends found in the building damage/injury data: cross-sectional survey of the population and injury cases for a case-control study of injuries; geographic analysis of injuries and building damage; integration into modeling for casualty estimation.