SYSTEMIC UNCERTAINTIES AND DECISION SUPPORT APPLICATIONS IN REGIONAL SEISMIC LOSS ANALYSES
A number of tools and advancements have been developed over the course of the last decade for public use in regional seismic disaster planning. This paper addresses some of the considerations and approaches that influence state-of-theart regional seismic loss assessments and risk management, with particular emphasis on approaches applied to areas having potentially high consequence but low probability seismic hazards in the United States. The various components of regional seismic loss assessment are synthesized within a GIS-based framework, including the aggregation and propagation of uncertainties inherent in the analysis. The threat posed by ground shaking and ground failure hazard effects is estimated and mapped onto high resolution point-wise building stock and bridge inventory assets. Inventory vulnerability is assigned based on structural classifications of construction materials, together with general system configurations and lateral resisting system types. Likelihood of damage to the built environment is then determined by the combination of the hazard and vulnerability for each building and bridge, and social and economic consequences are projected based on correlation with descriptions of physical damage levels, both in terms of expected values, and dispersions of the aggregate regional analysis output. Decision support algorithms are also discussed, which leverage the high resolution of the regional analysis output to focus mitigation planning and capital investment on particularly sensitive and influential assets within study regions.
China OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE AND TREATMENT OF EPISTEMIC UNCERTAINTIES IN EARTHQUAKE LOSS MODELLING
Earthquake loss modelling is a multidisciplinary activity which requires the collection of databases of earthquake activity, ground conditions, ground-motion prediction models, building stock and infrastructure exposure, vulnerability characteristics of the exposed elements, repair costs and human casualties. Each component of the model carries large associated uncertainties which need to be propagated through the analysis, such that the total uncertainty in the resulting loss estimates can be obtained. However, a number of epistemic (i.e. knowledge-based) uncertainties present within a given method are often not accounted for. This paper describes various studies which have looked at the influence of these uncertainties in the loss model results and makes proposals for how these uncertainties could be included in future earthquake loss models.
Similarities in protozoan and flatworm habituation behavior.
ONE problem in the study of habituation in protozoa is that similar results, given the same experimental manipulations, may not be obtained in metazoa. I shall compare habituation behaviour in the protozoan Spirostomum with that in the micrometazoan Rhabdocoel flatworm Stenostomum; it remains to be shown whether there is a correspondence between protozoa and metazoa both in behaviour and in their underlying chemical processes. Both these organisms contract in response to mechanical and touch stimuli: when subjected to repeated stimulation, they habituate1. Furthermore, the more intense the stimulus, the longer it takes for habituation to occur1.