Development of Estimation Method for Loss of Human Lives Due to Catastrophic Urban Disasters

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Rapid urbanization has increased disaster vulnerability in urban areas in Japan. As shown in the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake disasters, the loss of human lives are extremely huge in urban disasters in which several scenarios are not predictable before the disaster. This is mainly due to complex structure of our urban society such as densely distributed wooden and old houses, much crowded passengers at every railway and subway station in rush hours and lifeline network systems with a little redundancy. Catastrophic urban disasters are characterized by overpopulation and dense concetration of energy and information which have not maintained their balance with investment for disaster reduction or prevention. The population density in large cities of over 1 million residents is the most important factor which amplifies the loss of human lives as well as property damage. The maximum risk to life can be estimated with the function of lifespan which expresses a disaster prevention force. The loss of human lives due to the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake disaster in January 17,1995 was estimated by this method. The estimated maximum number of loss of lives was 1.33 times of the number recorded at Kobe, Nishinomiya and Ashiya cities. The earthquake occurrence at 5 : 46 am.was very fortunate because urban activity did not start yet. The disaster proposed us much data about scenarios of damage. From the view points of statistics, the railway accidents due to strong seismic acceleration of the earthquake brought almost minimum human damage.