Latin American and Caribbean earthquakes in the GEM’s Earthquake Consequences Database (GEMECD)

Abstract

Among the activities developed under the framework of the Global Earthquake Model, the development of a global consequences database was included. This was defined with the objective of serving as public repository of damages and losses, occurred on different types of elements because of a selected list of earthquakes with epicentres at varying locations around the globe, but also to be used as a benchmark for the development of vulnerability models that capture specific characteristics of the building typologies in each country. The online earthquakes consequences’ database has information on 71 events where 16 of them occurred in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region. A complete and comprehensive review and data gathering process were developed for these selected earthquakes accounting for different aspects and dimensions that were considered of interest, besides the physical damage, such as casualties, socio-economic implications, damages and disruptions in critical facilities and infrastructures, together with the occurrence of secondary events triggered by the ground shaking such as landslides and tsunamis. When possible, the damage and casualties were geo-located using a standardized approach and included in the database. The contributions of the Latin America and Caribbean Region to the database were at the same time a challenge and an opportunity to collect, review, put together and standardize, up to a certain point, damage data of previous earthquakes additionally of being a step forward in the field of open data.