Introduction

Abstract

Earthquake and disaster casualties are a matter of serious political and humanitarian concern. At the time of preparing this book for publication, the world seems to be experiencing a rising tide of earthquake casualties. The death toll from the recent 12.1.2010 earthquake in Haiti is perhaps 220,000 killed with 500,000 injured. And this follows the major disasters of Wenchuan, China (88,289 dead), Yogyakarta, Indonesia (5,749 dead), and Kashmir, Pakistan (87,351 dead) all of which have occurred in the last 5 years. Just considering these events, the recent annual death toll has been more than 75,000, higher than in any comparable period in the last century. Figure 1.1 shows the decade by decade global fatality rate per million global population from 1900 until the end of 2009, putting the last decade into context.