Earthquake-induced unserviceable apartment rate and earthquake insurance in Taiwan

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we aimed to estimate the earthquake-induced, annual unserviceable apartment rate (AUAR) for each township in Taiwan and note that the AUAR does not account for the number of unserviceable apartments caused by earlier major earthquakes in previous years. The key sources of information used in this study include the 37 active faults and their respective activity (e.g. maximum earthquake and return period), along with empirical relationships that can predict unserviceable apartment rate (UAR) and peak ground velocity. The result shows that the nationwide (average) AUAR among the 349 townships of Taiwan should be equal to 0.00081. The second part of the study is to review the current earthquake insurance in Taiwan. Based on the insurance premium and insurance claim, the corresponding AUAR derived with the insurance data is equal to 0.00077, which is fairly close to that (0.00081) from this study. In other words, this study is somehow supported by the data of the earthquake insurance in Taiwan or this study validates the rationale of the current insurance policy that is well reflecting the earthquake potentials and apartment vulnerability in Taiwan.