Abstract
Having the ability of near real-time damage assessment would benefit earthquake emergency response operations in Taiwan greatly. Thus, we established an empirical method of assessing the near real-time damage using the rapid reporting system in Taiwan. Relationships between peak ground velocity and damage rates (fatality rate, total and partial household collapsing rates) during the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake were determined in this study. The distribution of the peak ground velocity can be mapped within minutes of post-initiation of a strong earthquake by the rapid reporting system of the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau (Wu et at 2001). By correlating peak ground velocity with damage rates gathered by the rapid reporting system, a near real-time damage assessment can be issued, in addition to the epicenter, magnitude and intensity.
Highlights
Located on the western circum-Pacific seismic belt with a plate convergence rate of 8 cm/year (Yu et al 1999), Taiwan had experienced numerous destructive earthquakes with severe casualties and property losses
A Taiwan Rapid Earthquake Information Release System (TREIRS) using a real-time strong-motion accelerograph network consisting 82 stations distributed around Taiwan were established by the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) (Fig. 1)
The fatality rate, total and partial collapsed household rates in individual townships were carefully determined during the disaster relief operations according to the population records of the 1999 demographic summary (National Office of Statistics, 2000)
Summary
Located on the western circum-Pacific seismic belt with a plate convergence rate of 8 cm/. The CWB collected high quality data of the strong ground motion during this earthquake, and provide an excellent opportunity to derive empiri cal relationships between PGA, PGV and earthquake losses with statistic evaluation by the National office of Statistics. This data set is important to seismology as well as to earthquake engineering because it includes over 60 recording sites within 20 km of fault ruptures, providing a five-fold increase of near source strong-motion records from major earthquakes of the world. These mainshock strong-motion records were utilized to calculate for PGA and PGV values of individual townships in Taiwan. (2) Number of the households is a better index than the number of buildings, since a high-rised building may contain several tens to hundreds households, and a low rised building may contain one or two households
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