Too generous to a fault? Is reliable earthquake safety a lost art? Errors in expected human losses due to incorrect seismic hazard estimates

Abstract

“One is well advised, when traveling to a new territory, to take a good map and then to check the map with the actual territory during the journey.” In just such a reality check, Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program (GSHAP) maps (prepared using PSHA) portrayed a “low seismic hazard,” which was then also assumed to be the “risk to which the populations were exposed.” But time‐after‐time‐after‐time the actual earthquakes that occurred were not only “surprises” (many times larger than those implied on the maps), but they were often near the maximum potential size (Maximum Credible Earthquake or MCE) that geologically could occur. Given these “errors in expected human losses due to incorrect seismic hazard estimates” revealed globally in these past performances of the GSHAP maps (> 700,000 deaths 2001–2011), we need to ask not only: “Is reliable earthquake safety a lost art?” but also: “Who and what were the ‘Raiders of the Lost Art?’ ”