Will Performance-based Earthquake Engineering Break the Power Law?

Abstract

It seems that the entire community of earthquake professionals was stunned by the number of fatalities (approximately 300,000 dead or missing and presumed dead) in the 2004 Sumatran-Andaman earthquake and tsunami. It took us by surprise and seemed so out of proportion with anything that occurred in the decades prior. It was a rare confluence of circumstances that led to such massive loss. If, through our earthquake studies, we had been able to prevent just 5% of those deaths, then we would have saved more lives than have been lost in all other tsunamis for many decades. One clear lesson stands out from this tragedy: We must do a better job on tsunami hazard mitigation efforts for very large earthquakes (M > 9). While these events are rare, they account for most of the total hazard.

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