Analysis on the impact of Taiwan far-field earthquakes on the disaster avoidance behavior of people in high-rise buildings in large cities in southeast China

Abstract

Taiwan Province is an earthquake-prone area, and strong earthquakes in Taiwan could affect coastal cities in the mainland. The high-rise buildings in coastal cities often are seriously affected, which can cause social panic. Therefore, it is necessary to study the seismic impact of moderate and strong earthquakes in Taiwan on the mainland coast to accurately analyze the effect on buildings in this area, especially the responses of people in high-rise buildings after the earthquake, and to provide a relatively accurate reference for the evaluation of the timely restoration of social order. This paper uses the 43.29 million mobile phone location records collected after the Ms6.1 earthquake in Hualien, Taiwan on April 18, 2021, for the bandwidth selection in kernel density estimation in different regions and conducts a quantitative density analysis of 331 buildings using the communication check-in data after the earthquake on different temporal and spatial scales. Through this work, an exponential model of people’s responses in high-rise buildings to far-field strong earthquakes in Taiwan is obtained, and the flow pattern of people in regard to disaster avoidance in high-rise buildings after far-field non-destructive earthquakes is summarized. This article can be a reference for the local government to judge the impact of Taiwan’s far-field earthquakes and to make decisions with respect to disaster relief.