Societal exposure to future earthquakes

To effectively plan for and mitigate earthquake and related hazards, managers and policymakers need to have a sense of what communities and things of societal value are vulnerable to future events. This information also helps in the development of effective education and outreach efforts. There have been various attempts to better understand societal vulnerability and risk to earthquake hazards in the Cascadia region. Examples include: 

Scenarios provide narratives of expected losses and the timing of these losses after an earthquake. CREW has published several scenarios for various earthquake sources in the Cascadia region.

Loss estimates are based on earthquake, soils, engineering and other information to generate feasible estimates. Loss estimates have been completed for:

• Cascadia subduction zone; and
• Earthquake scenarios in Washington. 

Community exposure assessments are based on overlays of earthquake-hazard and socioeconomic data to provide a first-approximation of possible losses. Exposure assessments have been completed for:

• Earthquake scenarios in Washington;
• Cascadia tsunami hazards in Washington; and
• Cascadia tsunami hazards in Oregon.