More than a century of seismological observations clearly indicate that all earthquakes have aftershocks, some of which have the potential for broad damaging effects. Although many aftershocks are notably smaller than the mainshock some could be large enough to cause considerable damage. This is particularly true for structures whose lateral load–resisting systems were compromised by the mainshock.
This AIR study formulated a statistical framework for forecasting aftershocks for earthquake scenarios in AIR catalogs; investigated the impacts of aftershocks on regional and local loss estimates, taking into consideration the damage states of buildings impacted by mainshocks; and explored practical ways to incorporate loss impacts from aftershocks into AIR’s earthquake risk analysis scheme.
Read the white paper “Assessing the Impact of Aftershocks on Regional Earthquake Loss Estimation”
