Determination of disaster scenarios for estimating relief demand to develop an early response to an earthquake disaster in urban areas of developing countries

Abstract

After an earthquake strikes, information about relief demand and victims’ location is needed to prepare and perform an effective response as soon as possible. However, available and reliable information is extremely limited before the disaster strikes, even in the early moments. In urban areas, the formulation and analysis of disaster scenarios allow to estimate the potential relief demand and the magnitude and characteristics of the immediate response efforts. We propose a five steps procedure to generate and analyze earthquake disaster scenarios in urban areas at block level, which allows to estimate the quantity and location of the relief demand for each scenario and to plan an immediate response. The paper focuses on steps 2 and 3. The procedure generates sets of scenarios from Atlas of Natural Hazards and Risk (ANHR) and/or historical data of previous earthquakes (step 2), and estimates their initial relief demand (step 3). Once the demand is known (location and amount), the procedure allows prepositioning the aid closer to the victims considering small-size facilities and small quantities of relief goods. The procedure is useful for cities with few information and resources, as the cities in developing countries. The procedure is applied to two areas in Mexico City, generating scenarios based on an ANHR and information of the 2017 Mexico City Earthquake. For each scenario, the relief demand is estimated. Then, for each study area, the facilities location and the delivery paths are determined, as preparation to develop an early response in case of a future earthquake.