EPICENTRE - Earthquake and People Interaction Centre

地震风险由三个要素组成：危险性、易损性和暴露性。必须对所有这三个要素有良好的理解、表述和建模，才能得出有用和可靠的人类和经济损失估计数。各国政府需要这样的估计，以决定是否以及如何进行干预，以减轻地震造成的潜在损失，以及将关键设施或紧急资源放置在哪里，以确保有效的灾后救济和恢复。然而，现有的损失估计方法将风险评估的范围限制在地面震动影响，采用不可靠的建筑物破坏和易损性模型，而在估计人员损失时几乎忽略了这些模型，只有粗略的估计工具。在到达伦敦大学学院后不久，国际地震学会开始在地震工程研究中建立一个新的概念，其中将人们在此类灾害中的脆弱性的重要性纳入了对问题的工程考虑中。通过与政府、工业界、非政府组织和其他学术界的互动，这一点已经以高度多学科的地震和人民互动中心(Epientre)的形式变得切实起来。中心已经开发了自己的专业硕士课程(定于2007年9月开始)，这项提议旨在为一些启动研究提供种子资金，以激励中心活动的研究方面。具有挑战性的工程学资金将使申请者能够将一个多学科的研究小组(地震工程师、社会科学家、沿海工程师和统计学家)聚集在一起，解决“正常”风险方程中每一个组成部分的知识空白，目的是扩大该方程的应用范围，并为决策者提供更好的指导，指导他们在哪里以及如何投资以减轻地震损失。将特别讨论三个研究主题：暴流(海啸)损失预测、地震中的人员损失估计和建筑物地震损失评估。这些初步研究将构成该中心早期研究开发的核心，并提供一个启动重点，使其能够通过进一步的筹资举措而蓬勃发展。在具有挑战性的工程学资助结束时，该中心将成为英国21世纪地震工程学的研究密集型、积极传播的英才中心。

Earthquake risk is composed of three elements: Hazard, Vulnerability and Exposure. Good understanding, representation and modelling of all three elements are necessary in order to produce useful and reliable human and economic loss estimates. Governments require such estimates to make decisions as to if and how to intervene to mitigate potential earthquake induced losses, and where to locate critical facilities or emergency resources to ensure effective post-disaster relief and recovery. However, existing loss estimation methodologies limit their scope of hazard assessment to ground shaking effects, adopt unreliable models of building damage and vulnerability that are practically disregarded in the estimation of human losses for which only coarse estimation tools exist. Shortly after arriving at UCL the PI began to set up a new concept in earthquake engineering research in which the importance of vulnerability of people in such disasters was included in the engineering consideration of the problem. Through interactions with government, industry, NGOs and other academics this has become tangible in the form of the highly multidisciplinary Earthquake and People Interaction Centre (EPICENTRE). The Centre has developed its own specialised MSc course (due to start in September 2007) and this proposal is designed to provide the seed funding for a number of initiating studies to inspire the research side of the Centre's activities. The Challenging Engineering funding will enable the applicant to bring together a multidisciplinary group of researchers (earthquake engineers, social scientists, coastal engineers and statisticians) to address gaps in knowledge in each of the components of the 'normal' risk equation with the aim of extending the scope of its application of this equation and providing decision makers with better guidance for where and how to invest to mitigate earthquake losses. In particular three research topics will be addressed: violent flow (tsunami) loss prediction, human loss estimation in earthquakes and building seismic damage assessment. These initial studies will form the core of the early research development of the Centre and provide a starting focus to enable it to thrive through further funding initiatives. At the end of the Challenging Engineering funding the Centre will be a research-intensive actively-disseminating centre of excellence in the UK for twenty-first century earthquake engineering.