Challenges in collating earthquake casualty field data

Abstract

Understanding why and how injuries and deaths are caused in ­earthquakes is essential for mitigating and preparing for future human losses. It is only by exploring these causal pathways that engineers, architects and all related in the field of earthquake protection can strive to prioritise and offer feasible strategies to reduce future casualties. The best way to gain a holistic view of causes of injuries, capturing information of a survivor’s experiences leading to different severities and types of injuries, is by surveying the survivors of an earthquake in target sample groups. However, there are very few events in the past where in-depth surveys exploring the causes of deaths and injuries of survivors have been conducted. This is because collecting representative samples is not straightforward and there is currently no standard procedure or sufficient funding in this research area to ensure data is collected after each event. This paper starts by highlighting the difficulties in acquiring data from the field after an earthquake and providing suggestions for overcoming some of the problems with a questionnaire specifically designed to explore all areas of survivors’ experiences from the moment of earthquake occurrence to their current situation. The robustness of the design is tested in three real events and modifications to the original design and reasons behind these changes are explained. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of casualty data collection after real events and to begin the process of standardising and achieving a global questionnaire form for the future.