Earthquake

Earthquake

An earthquake shakes the ground under the site and cracks or collapses structures. The shaking damages the asset, and the site stops while it is repaired. Earthquake prices both Property damage (% of asset value) and Business interruption (% of annual revenue). It is geophysical, not climatic, and sits outside the EU Taxonomy list of climate hazards.

What the map shows

• Today: the GSHAP peak ground acceleration with a 10 % probability of being exceeded in 50 years, about a 475-year return period, in g (sheet).
• Projected: none. No climate scenario moves the ground, so the map and the loss are the same at every horizon and under every scenario. Only the level carries information; the change to baseline is zero by construction.

How the loss is computed

The engine reads the GSHAP acceleration at the site's point. That single value anchors a hazard curve, rebuilt for all other return periods with a standard log-linear seismic approximation. HAZUS fragility curves, keyed on the structural class assigned to the site type, turn each acceleration into a mean damage ratio. Business interruption is the HAZUS loss-of-use relation on that ratio. The losses are integrated over the hazard curve into an annual loss. Earthquake is tagged Built. See Damage functions: Earthquake and Climate risks.

Sources

• Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program (GSHAP), Giardini et al., 1999. http://static.seismo.ethz.ch/GSHAP/ Free use with citation.
• Damage curve: HAZUS lognormal fragility curves (FEMA), representative moderate/low-code values.

Limits

• GSHAP is a 1999 product at 0.1° resolution and does not capture more recent local refinements.
• Only one point of the hazard curve is known. The rest is reconstructed with an assumed slope, and the annual loss is sensitive to that slope.
• Earthquake-triggered landslides are not priced: the landslide risk has a rainfall trigger only.