The Year in Review

James Daniell & Armand Vervaeck

2011 has played host to the largest two earthquakes, economically speaking, in the history of the countries of Japan and New Zealand. The M9.0 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 11^th March, 2011 proved to be the most expensive earthquake of all time, causing between $400-700 billion USD in total losses and approximately 19000 deaths, while the Christchurch earthquake (a M6.3 quake close to the city of Christchurch) caused a huge building stock loss and approximately $15-20 billion USD damage with around 80% insured losses. Their respective aftershocks caused further damage. Significant losses were also seen in Turkey from the Van earthquake in October, in the India-Nepal-Tibet region in September, in China from numerous earthquakes in the Yunnan and Xinjiang Provinces and in the USA from the Virginia earthquake.

Author’s Notes

We hope that you enjoy the CATDAT Yearly Review of Damaging Earthquakes in 2011. The CATDAT Database has been built up by collecting earthquake, flood and other natural disaster loss data for quite a few years since 2003 at the University of Adelaide, with a more concerted effort in the past 3 to 4 years to build up the databases further. This report in 2011 only shows a small percentage of the data collected but a new and exciting future in earthquake reporting. In the last 12 months, we have reported constantly on www.earthquake-report.com, founded by Armand Vervaeck, and worked tirelessly to provide the best quality scientific reporting of felt earthquake and volcanic events worldwide and CATDAT to provide detailed accounts on every damaging earthquake worldwide.

The purpose of this report is to present the damaging earthquakes in the year 2011 around the world that were entered into the CATDAT Damaging Earthquake Database in terms of their socio-economic effects. This 2011 report showcases the work that CATDAT, in collaboration with earthquake-report.com / SOS Earthquakes, is doing.

A big thanks to Maren for supporting me through the sporadic late nights (when earthquakes have occurred), as well as with SMS updates, translations, constant earthquake discussions and intellectual conversations. I would also like to thank my parents, Anne and Trevor, and also my sister, Katherine, and brother-in-law, Quentin, for the numerous reports and papers I have sent them and they have checked and for the numerous updates as to natural disaster data.

A big thank you goes to the General Sir John Monash Foundation (supported by the Australian Government) that has been funding my PhD research at Karlsruhe at KIT/CEDIM and allowed me to choose this location from all worldwide institutions (and in particular I would like to thank Peter Binks). I would like to also thank the University of Adelaide, Université Joseph Fourier Grenoble, University of Pavia and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology for my education and for their promotion of learning and development outside the course environment.

Thank you also to the Center of Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) for supporting me in my research in the natural disaster field. In addition, I would like to thank Friedemann Wenzel, Bijan Khazai and Tina Kunz-Plapp for their interest, support and motivating me to publish my work. I have also been aided by a number of interested individuals for components of the database but with the amount of data around on historical damaging earthquakes, I am always interested in new reports, studies, questions, comments, improvements and collaboration.

I would also like to urge people’s involvement with some great worldwide earthquake and natural disaster risk related initiatives out there – just to mention a few; Willis Research Network (WRN), EERI, USGS-PAGER, GEM, EMSC-CSEM, GEO-CAN and WAPMERR.

Many thanks,

James Daniell

The data contained in this report is up to date as of 4 January 2012. The author takes no responsibility for errors that may be in the data and also misuse of the data provided. The EQLIPSE Building Inventory Database, CATDAT Natural Disaster and Socioeconomic Databases, OPAL Project, associated data and publications remain the intellectual property of James Daniell and are not to be reproduced in any form without permission.

SOS Earthquakes non-profit organization and Earthquake-report.com were developed to report about earthquakes and volcanoes in the best possible way and to create value-added information with a scientific and earthquake loss estimation perspective.

Earthquake Report bridges the gap in-between science and basic understanding.
News in the site not only appears very quickly, but we will always try to bring “Added Value” and “Scientific/Social Insight” news that you will not find anywhere else, as well as data from CATDAT.

Earthquake Report focusses on the Impact of Earthquakes and Volcanoes on society. We will search, analyse and create in-depth socio-economic reports for unique news, even in the most remote places on Earth. Victims of an earthquake in the jungle of Papua New Guinea merit the same attention as those people living in San Francisco, Tokyo, Port-au-Prince or Concepción.

Earthquake-Report.com is the information part of SOS Earthquakes, a non-profit organization specializing in earthquakes, with 5 important goals:

-bringing the best possible, highest quality earthquake information including CATDAT data
-providing free or cheap technology tools for mass media (QuakeSOS iPhone application)
-providing Quick and Structural aid to earthquake victims all over the world (still to be organized)
-giving rational unbiased geophysical, seismological, engineering and scientific earthquake details.
-working on earthquake preparedness and prevention.
Earthquake Report also supports QuakeSOS, the earthquake emergency iPhone Application.

SOS Earthquakes was founded in August 2010. SOS Earthquakes and Earthquake-Report.com are private initiatives to make the world just a little bit better. Every single donated dollar as a lifeline that strengthens our initiative and is needed for server space, programming and increased data gathering capability.

We welcome also the support of STRATEGIC PARTNERS who will enable us to reach as many people as possible. Strategic partners can be individuals or companies who want to make the world less traumatic, just like we do, or people or companies who require the latest damage, casualty, aid, economic and social data from earthquakes.

In this respect earthquake-report.com and CATDAT together provide the latest and best up-to-date information post-earthquake with a rapidly growing number of subscribers and data input sources.

Please contact me or James to make a donation or to become a strategic partner. Without monetary support, this service unfortunately cannot continue.

Postal address : Cederstraat 21, 2800 Mechelen, Belgium, Phone : +32478299395 Fax : +3215414670

In addition, I would like to thank my wife, Gerda, for her loving support through my 24-hour a day reporting and work with earthquake-report.com, and also to my family and friends as well as the millions of earthquake-report.com readers and subscribers. Thankyou and I hope that we can continue the service in 2012.

Many thanks,

Armand Vervaeck

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Author’s Notes
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
LIST OF TABLES
1 Introduction
2 What is CATDAT?
2.1 What is contained in the database?
2.2 Entry criteria
3 Damaging Earthquakes from 2011 in the CATDAT Damaging EQ Database
3.1 Where have the CATDAT damaging earthquakes occurred?
3.2 Casualty-bearing 2011 earthquakes
3.3 2011 earthquakes with over 100 people homeless or requiring shelter
3.4 Economic Losses from earthquakes in 2011 over $5 million US
3.5 Insured Losses from earthquakes in 2011 so far.
3.6 A quick comparison of the New Zealand and Tohoku Earthquakes in Numbers
4 A quick comparison of the 2011 Losses to the CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes Database since 1900
5 Conclusion
6 Main References
Appendix A: Summary pages of each 2011 damaging earthquake

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 - The process used to create the CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes Database (Daniell, 2011)
Figure 2 – The CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes Database parameters (Daniell, 2003-2011a)
Figure 3 – The location of the 121+ CATDAT damaging earthquakes in various countries during 2011
Figure 4 – The number of earthquakes per country in the 121+ CATDAT damaging earthquakes in various countries during 2011
Figure 5 – The fatal earthquakes in 2011 in the CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes Database.
Figure 6 – The casualty bearing earthquakes in 2011 in the CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes Database.
Figure 7 – The number of buildings damaged or destroyed in each 2011 CATDAT damaging earthquake
Figure 8 – The relative building damage index in each 2011 CATDAT damaging earthquake
Figure 9 – The number of homeless people in each 2011 CATDAT damaging earthquake
Figure 10 – The direct economic losses in each 2011 CATDAT damaging earthquake
Figure 11 – Yearly Direct Economic Losses from CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes showing 2011 as the highest loss year of the past 111 years.
Figure 12 – Yearly Total Economic Losses from CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes showing 2011 as the highest loss year of the past 111 years.
Figure 13 – Yearly Earthquake and Secondary Effect deaths in CATDAT for developing and developed nations through time – 2011 shows the largest death toll from a developed nation (HDI (2011) > 0.8)
Figure 14 – Major event losses in the CATDAT damaging earthquakes database from 1900-2011 (Daniell, 2003-2011a)
Figure 15 –Cumulative deaths and economic losses related to global 2011-dollar GDP (PPP) and population

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 – List of casualty-bearing earthquakes in 2011
Table 2 – List of homeless-bearing earthquakes in 2011
Table 3 – Final loss estimates for the 2011 Tohoku EQ disaggregated for tsunami, powerplant and earthquake using Japanese and CATDAT data as of 18th October
Table 4 – List of economic losses in earthquakes in 2011 with over $5 million USD or other notable losses (excluding nuclear disasters)
Table 5 – List of insured losses in earthquakes in 2011 so far over $1m
Table 6 – List of highest insured losses (1900-2011) in 2011 Country CPI adjusted $ international
Table 7 – A comparison of the Christchurch and Tohoku earthquakes in terms of numbers

• 1 Introduction

2011 has played host to the largest two earthquakes, economically speaking, in the history of the countries of Japan and New Zealand. The M9.0 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 11^th March, 2011 proved to be the most expensive earthquake of all time, causing between $400-700 billion USD in total losses and approximately 19000 deaths, while the Christchurch earthquake (a M6.3 quake close to the city of Christchurch) caused a huge building stock loss and approximately $15-20 billion USD damage with around 80% insured losses. Their respective aftershocks caused further damage. Significant losses were also seen in Turkey from the Van earthquake in October, in the India-Nepal-Tibet region in September, in China from numerous earthquakes in the Yunnan and Xinjiang Provinces and in the USA from the Virginia earthquake.

In addition, in the first half of 2011, the news came out that the death toll in Haiti was overestimated significantly. A report from a US-based consultancy group, LTL Strategies, as part of a USAID report, showed that the death toll was between 46190 and 84961. Daniell et al. (2010f, 2011j) using various approaches concluded that a death toll of 136933, with a range of 121843 to 167082 dead, was reasonable. Both of these totals are a massive reduction on the 316000 deaths quoted by the President on 12^th January, 2011.

Please note that for the purposes of this report due to different meanings of billion and million worldwide:
1 billion = 1,000,000,000 or 10⁹ 1 million = 1,000,000 or 10⁶

Final loss estimates for the 2011 Tohoku EQ disaggregated for tsunami, powerplant and earthquake - Japanese and CATDAT data

• 2. What is CATDAT?

CATDAT originated as a series of databases that has been collected by the author from many sources over the years (2003 onwards). It includes global data on floods, volcanoes and earthquakes (and associated effects). This report will focus on the damaging earthquakes in 2011, and a comparison as provided by the Damaging Earthquakes Database part of CATDAT. This database has been presented at the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society Conference in 2010 in Perth, Australia, in the form of 3 papers, and the data was also used to form an Asia-Pacific comparison of flood and earthquake socio-economic loss in the CECAR5 conference in Sydney, Australia, 2010. The details of the database can be found by typing “CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes Database” into Google and searching for the Daniell et al. (2011) paper in the journal, NHESS.

As of January 2012 in CATDAT v5.0328, over 19000 sources of information have been utilised to present data from over 12300 historical damaging earthquakes, with over 7000 earthquakes since 1900 examined and validated before insertion into the CATDAT damaging earthquakes database.

• 2.1 What is contained in the database?

Each validated earthquake includes the following parameters filled in to the best available detail:-

• Date (Day, Month, Year, Time (Local and UTC)).
• Seismological Information (EQ Hypocentre Latitude; Longitude; Depth (km); Intensity (MMI); Magnitude; Magnitude type)
• ISO3166-2 Country code, including Kosovo and South Sudan; ISO Country Name.
• Human Development Index of country; HDI Classification; Economic Classification; Social Classification; Urbanity Index; Population at time of event; Nominal GDP at time of event – split into developed or developing countries.
• CATDAT Preferred (Best Estimate) Deaths; Secondary Effect Deaths; Ground Shaking Deaths; CATDAT Upper and Lower Bound Death Estimates; Global Literature Source Upper and Lower Bound Death Estimates; Severe Injuries; Slight Injuries; CATDAT Upper and Lower Bound Injury Estimates; Global Source Upper and Lower (U/L) Bound Injury Estimates; Homeless (and U/L Bound); Affected (and U/L Bound); Missing.
• Buildings destroyed; Buildings damaged; Buildings damaged – L4, L3, L2, L1; Infrastructure Damaged; Critical and Large Loss Facilities; Lifelines damaged.
• Secondary effects that occurred (Tsunami, Seiche, Landslide (mud, snow, rock, soil, quake lake), Fire, Liquefaction, Flooding, Fault Rupture); % of the social losses that were caused by each secondary effect; % of economic losses that were caused by each secondary effect; Tsunami Deaths; Landslide Deaths; Fire Deaths; Liquefaction Deaths.
• Disease and additional long-term problems.
• Full word description of various sources contributing to the data, including associated references.
• Sectoral and indirect analysis of economic losses.
• Country-based CPI at time of disaster; Country-based Wage Index at time of disaster; Country-based GDP Index; USA CPI for comparison; Hybrid Natural Disaster Economic Conversion Index.
• CATDAT Preferred (Best Estimate) Total Economic Loss; CATDAT U/L Bound of Economic Loss; Global Source U/L Bound of Economic Loss; Additional Economic Loss estimates from varying sources; CATDAT Economic Loss 2011 HNDECI-Adjusted; CATDAT Economic Loss 2011-country based CPI adjusted.
• Insured Loss; Insured Loss In 2011 dollars; Insured estimate source; Estimated Insurance Takeout (or approx. takeout) at time of event.
• Indirect and Intangible economic losses.
• Estimated life cost given social values, working wages etc. at the time.
• Total Economic Loss as a percentage of country’s GDP; Social losses trended by population.
• CATDAT Earthquakes ranked via the Munich NatCat Service methodology.
• CATDAT Earthquakes ranked for the CATDAT Economic Disaster Ranking and CATDAT Social Disaster Ranking based on relative values and not absolute values.
• Link to ReliefWeb archive where available.
• Aid contribution; Aid delivered; Aid Source.
• Split country impacts (social and economic) where earthquake has affected more than 1 country.
• Various ratios between components for trends analysis.
• Normalisation strategies for current conditions. (Daniell et al., 2010g)
• Links to the author’s global rapid loss estimation model (part of his PhD).

This is contained in a Microsoft Excel framework with external links to other resources. It is also in SQL format.

• 2.2 Entry criteria

A damaging earthquake is entered into the CATDAT database by the following criteria in v. 5.03:-

• Any earthquake causing collapse of structural components.
• Any earthquake causing death, injury or homelessness.
• Any earthquake causing damage or flow-on effects exceeding 100,000 international dollars, Hybrid Natural Disaster Economic Conversion Index adjusted to 2011.
• Any earthquake causing disruption to a reasonable economic or social impact as deemed appropriate.
• A requirement of validation of the earthquake existence via 2 or more macroseismic recordings and/or seismological information recorded by stations and at least 1 of the 4 definitions above.
• Validation via external sources if Corruption Index < 2.7, subject to Polity ranking.

• 3 Damaging Earthquakes from 2011 in the CATDAT Damaging EQ Database

• 3.1 Where have the CATDAT damaging earthquakes occurred?

There have been at least 121 damaging earthquakes in 2011. These have occurred in the following countries, as shown in the diagram below. Note that events need to correspond to the criteria set out in the section above. It was seen that the Crete earthquake of M6.2, with minor car damage in Iraklion and minor non-structural house damage caused less than the criteria needed to be classified as a “CATDAT Damaging Earthquake”. There were many other “nearly” CATDAT damaging earthquakes during the year that are all reported on earthquake-report.com before CATDAT ranking.

There have been 27 damaging earthquakes in Japan, mainly aftershocks as a result of the 11th March Tohoku earthquake, 19 damaging earthquakes in China (up from 15 last year) that are classified under the CATDAT criteria, and 17 damaging earthquakes in New Zealand (mainly in Christchurch and as aftershocks of the 21st February earthquake).

• 3.2 Casualty-bearing 2011 earthquakes

There have been at least 24 fatal earthquakes in 2011. These are shown on the following diagram.

The most fatalities from an earthquake in 2011 were in the Japanese tsunami where over 19000 people were killed. However, most of these fatalities were due to the tsunami which was a result of the earthquake. It is unknown how many victims have died directly due to earthquake shaking action. As was reported by earthquake-report.com from NPA back in April about the first 13135 victims, 92.5% were drowned (12143), 4.4% were crushed to death mainly in tsunami collapsed houses (578), 1.1% were burned to death in various fires (148), with others killed via hypothermia and other causes. It will never be known how many died due to the earthquake, as separated from the tsunami; however, the autopsies give us an indicator that we can expect that about 1.0% of the 4.4% crushed were probably in earthquake collapsed houses.

In addition, we can assume a proportion of the remaining 2% that were unknown were also earthquake-related (a high value of 10% could be assumed). This would leave about 1.2% or about 158. When extrapolating for the final 6000 deaths that were not stress or chronic disease related, then the total is about 210. This value corresponds quite well to the 137 non-tsunami impacted deaths that have been recorded in the non-coastal areas. Some of the non-coastal deaths, however, were due to heart attack, fire or landslide.

As of 1st January 2012, 15844 have been killed and 3451 are missing (19295 in total). Of the 19295, around 600 are assumed to have died from earthquake-related stress and chronic disease. Approximately 210 should be earthquake-collapse related. Around 250 could be related to other causes such as fire, landslides etc. About 94% of deaths were tsunami related.

In addition, at least 36 other injury-bearing earthquakes have occurred in the world, making a total of 60 known casualty-bearing earthquakes for 2011.

The Van earthquakes in Turkey in October and November caused 604 deaths and 40 deaths respectively. Most of these were due to building collapse, thus causing the largest proportion of the 1335 shaking-related fatalities for the year. Christchurch with 181 deaths, mainly due to the collapse of 3 reinforced concrete buildings, also was a large event.

Table 1 – List of casualty-bearing earthquakes in 2011

• 3.3 2011 earthquakes with over 100 people homeless or requiring shelter

The earthquakes which impacted the most people were the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami, the Sikkim earthquake in the India/Nepal/China/Bhutan/Bangladesh region and the earthquake in Van, Turkey. Although generally linked to casualties, some major earthquakes have very few casualties, yet high numbers of respective homeless. For earthquakes with smaller numbers of homeless people, estimates are not usually provided and need to be calculated by red tagged buildings, with a lowest estimate being those people living in destroyed buildings. A number of earthquakes in 2011 had unknown homeless levels.

The number of buildings damaged or destroyed in each of the 121 damaging earthquakes is shown in the following diagram. Over 1,000,000 buildings were damaged in the Japan earthquake/tsunami.

Also shown is the relative extent of building damage including destroyed buildings, as a ratio of 0.85 and damaged buildings with 0.15. This shows the Van, Sikkim, Christchurch and Japan earthquakes as having the greatest extent of damage this year.

The Japan earthquake caused the most homeless in 2011 with somewhere between 300000 and 550000 people homeless at some point in the disaster. Many moved into other forms of accommodation. Although the casualty toll was not high in Turkey, the calculated number of homeless was about 270000, exacerbated by winter weather conditions and the low development of the region. The Sikkim earthquake also caused just under 100000 homeless. Other major homeless tolls were seen in some Chinese earthquakes.The number of homeless in each damaging earthquake are summarised in the following diagram.

Although the overall damage was much reduced by good earthquake building practice in NZ, due to the red tag level as the result of liquefaction and higher post-earthquake standards in New Zealand than in many other countries, the Christchurch, N.Z., earthquake has a large number of people displaced. Most have moved in with friends and family, or have moved; however, they still count as displaced from their pre-earthquake state. 6592 properties are currently red zoned by CERA.

• 3.4 Economic Losses from earthquakes in 2011 over $5 million US