Robin Spence - Why do buildings collapse in earthquakes? Building for safety in seismic areas

The surprising conclusion is reached that, although the global annual loss rate has fluctuated somewhat over time, the trend has remained relatively constant, with a peak of 0.1% in 1949, reducing in more recent years to about half of this value. Thus, while production and population have increased enormously over the last century, and thus actual values of loss have increased correspondingly, there has been only a small decrease in the loss rate as a proportion of GWP. But this decrease is not enough to suggest that the problem of economic earthquake losses is being brought under control. For small poor countries such as Haiti, the total cost of a single event can be more than 100% of the country's GDP. Indeed, recent events have suggested that, given the increasing interconnectedness of the world's economy, the indirect losses are increasing and will become more dominant in future events (Daniell et al. 2012).

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