SEISMIC RISK ASSESSMENT FOR RURAL AREAS

Abstract

Armenia is vulnerable to a number of disasters due to natural hazards, such as earthquake, drought, flood, landslide, mudslide, strong wind, snowstorm, frost and hail. In this study it is proposed a fast and simple seismic risk-assessment procedure for rural areas. Risk assessment is done by index-based method. The preliminary risk assessment is based on two types of data: geological and social.  The parameters describing geological conditions needed for this model are the following: seismic hazard level, active faults, landslides, reservoirs and rockfalls and the parameters describing social conditions are the following: number of people, total built area, number of pupils (if school exists),  health services and lifelines. As an important part of lifelines the roads to settlement are discussing. All these parameters were classified by their importance and were given weights concerning that.

Keywords

• seismic risk, rural area, index-based method

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