Author(s):
David Robert Strong* - United States Geological Survey
Richard L Bernknopf, PhD - U.S. Geological Survey
Paul P Hearn, PhD - U.S. Geological Survey
Nicolas Luco - U.S. Geological Survey
Erdem Karaca, PhD - Swiss Reinsurance America Corporation
Abstract:
The New Madrid seismic zone in the Lower Mississippi Valley has been the site of some of the most powerful earthquakes in United States history. These earthquakes, although rare, would devastate nearby cities such as Memphis were they to occur today.
The city of Memphis is especially vulnerable to large-scale damage from a future earthquake event due to its proximity to New Madrid. Prospective building codes will need to be evaluated on a regional level to determine a "best" risk mitigation strategy over a period of time. A web-based implementation of the Land Use Portfolio Modeler is being developed to evaluate the trade-offs between safety and cost for different building codes to provide cost-effective hazard mitigation. Local planning authorities, emergency managers, and businesses can quickly estimate the expected return from mitigation for a proposed level of risk reduction. The tool incorporates expected annual losses calculated from probabilistic seismic hazards and building vulnerability models for hypothetical public and private commercial buildings. Ultimately, the tool will allow planners to characterize the continuum of risks and mitigation costs for various earthquake hazards and planning horizons to better evaluate different policy options
