EPICENTRE - Earthquake and People Interaction Centre

地震风险由三个要素组成：危险性、脆弱性和暴露。为了得出有用和可靠的人的和经济损失估计数，必须对所有三个要素有很好的理解、表述和建模。各国政府需要这种估计来决定是否以及如何进行干预，以减轻潜在的地震造成的损失，以及在何处安置关键设施或紧急资源，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其灾害评估范围限制在地面震动影响，采用不可靠的建筑物损坏和脆弱性模型，在估计人员损失时几乎忽略了这些模型，因为只有粗略的估计工具。在到达伦敦大学学院后不久，PI开始建立一个新的概念，在地震工程研究中，人们在这种灾害中的脆弱性的重要性被纳入了工程考虑的问题。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与人民互动中心（EPICENTRE）的形式变得具体化。该中心已经开发了自己的专业硕士课程（定于2007年9月开始），该提案旨在为一些启动研究提供种子资金，以激励该中心活动的研究方面。该基金将使申请人能够汇集一个多学科的研究小组，（地震工程师，社会科学家，海岸工程师和统计学家）解决“正常”风险方程中每个组成部分的知识差距，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特别是三个研究课题将被解决：暴力流（海啸）的损失预测，地震中的人员损失估计和建筑物的地震破坏评估。这些初步研究将构成中心早期研究发展的核心，并提供一个起始重点，使其能够通过进一步的资助举措蓬勃发展。在地震工程资助结束时，该中心将成为英国21世纪世纪地震工程的一个研究密集型、积极传播的卓越中心。

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.