Urban Local Earthquake Disaster Risk Index & Its Application In Shanghai

Urban Local Earthquake Disaster Risk Index (ULEDRI), which is firstly presented in this dissertation, analyzes the earthquake disaster threats faced by a megacity from a different perspective. This composite and hierarchical index focuses on the spatial imbalance of the earthquake disaster risk within a megacity, and gives the relative risk level among the local areas of the city.The spatial districts of the geological environments and urban features among the local areas within a megacity will cause the imbalance of risk distribution. It is significant for disaster management, resource allocation, city planning and site choosing to reveal this kind of imbalance. ULEDRI is the first risk analysis approach Whose object is to describe this kind of imbalance. It allows direct comparison of relative earthquake disaster risk of different local areas within a city, and describes the relative contributions of various factors (direct hazard, collateral hazard, exposure,vulnerability, city function and emergency response and recovery capability) to the overall risk, from which the feature of risk of each local area could be given.ULEDRI is different from the existing risk assessment approaches in three aspects. First, taking the composite index form makes ULEDRI easy to understand and use. This can not only consider those disaster components which cannot be described through physical results in general risk analysis methods, but also allow the nonprofessional users, e.g. city planner, make use of the index in their work. Second,the hierarchical structure of ULEDRI provides the different users with needed information according to their requests and knowledge level about the earthquake disaster. Third, the basis on which factors were identified is not the categories of exposure, as other approaches do, but the effects of the factors on the disaster formation, which is advantageous in revealing the reason of risk formation.Developing a city's ULEDRI should involve the following six- step procedure: (1) Determine the study unit of ULEDRI; (2) create a conceptual framework of all the factors that contribute to ULEDRI; (3) Choose measurable indicators to represent each of factors in the framework; (4) Collect the data of indicators; (5) Determine the combination way and weights; (6) present and assess the ULEDRI result. As a case study this dissertation developed Shanghai's ULEDRI, whose study units are the ten center districts of the city. From such an index, the spatial distribution features of earthquake disaster risk of Shanghai were shown. Its potential benefits to earthquake preparedness and disaster mitigation of Shanghai were analyzed and explored.Based on GIS technology,the unfixed study unit ULEDRI could keep the macroscopical sense of indcators even in small study unit. As a result, it could obtainthe relative risk levels of smaller local areas. Additionally, this kind of ULEDRI couldsolve the fOllowing problems in the fixed study unit ULEDRI: blurring the spatialdistrict of some indicators and the data processing troubles caused by unifying theindicator units. In addition, GIS provide an ideal platform to develop the dynamicULEDRI and to present ULEDRI result in vivid way. A ULEDRI system of Shanghai(SH-UDI), which integrates data processing, study unit determination, ULEDRIcalculation and result presentation, was developed based on the three differentindication units.W are also seVeral forhal works about the deveoPing the inde cOnducted inthes disHon: first, in orde tO emPhasize the effect of city fimedon on seithe riSk,city Mon is deford as a faCtr of ULEDm, and the way to -- them wasgiven. Second, present a new methd, the modifled SUbective assesSmen tOdetennin the weights of ULEDm. Finaily, In dbog of concePt frameWrk andchOosing the indictors, new theories and lessons from recen city earthquaks weeconsidered and incfudd in these works.Some draWacks associated nd the conSt...