New Method of Measuring Earthquake Devastation Reveals Which Countries Suffer the Most From Such Tremblors

This measure, developed by researchers at the International Center for Earth Simulation Foundation, compares earthquake fatalities to a country's population size, revealing how some nations bear a disproportionate burden of earthquake deaths.

In their endeavour, the researchers discovered a few surprises. While you’d expect larger nations such as Japan or China — highly populous states notorious for their recurring and intense earthquakes — to rank higher on the EQFL list, it was actually much smaller countries that topped the ranks. These included nations such as Ecuador, Lebanon, Haiti, Turkmenistan, Iran and Portugal, even though they experience far fewer earthquakes.

The scientists reckon this disparity may be due to how even small earthquakes can cause a significant number of deaths in smaller and more unprepared populations. Further, the losses represent a greater portion of their population, which can be relatively devastating for smaller nations compared to larger and more developed ones.

Aside from these smaller nations, other top-rankers included countries lying on major tectonic plate boundaries, since this is where some of the Earth’s most intense earthquakes occur. This is the reason Afghanistan — lying in a region where the Indian and Eurasian plates meet — ranks high in EQFL due to the concentrated impact of even rare earthquakes in the region.

Considering that cities typically have more earthquake-resistant construction and faster emergency response compared to more rural areas, the global trend of urbanisation could be further contributing to this fortuitous decline. However, some countries, such as Italy, face difficulties due to the stubborn preservation and continued use of older, earthquake-prone buildings.

Earthquakes can incur a massive toll on not just the region’s infrastructure, but also on the people living in them, especially if the victim populations are marginalised. The EQFL, thus, can be a very valuable tool for understanding and addressing the human cost of earthquakes. By identifying countries most vulnerable to earthquake fatalities, it can guide targeted disaster risk reduction efforts and resource allocation.

The findings of this research have been published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America and can be accessed here.

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