SEISMIC VULNERBAILITY ASSESSMENT OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

The Disaster risk is a combination of Hazard and vulnerability of the specific disaster in context. Without the event, the vulnerability does not pose any threat. Hazard holds much greater impact in a risk, but vulnerability determines the level of impact an area will bear to a certain event. For a seismic event seismic vulnerability is highly important whereby the vulnerability for a seismic event is composed of the structural and socio-economic vulnerability of an event. As long as all these factors are considered a disaster event can be mitigated and specific risk reduction steps can be taken in order to reduce the impact of an event. It is to be noted that for Pakistan, it is highly important to determine the seismic vulnerability for there is a variance of values in vulnerability across different region. There have been previously conducted studies in order to determine the vulnerable factors. The current study will undertake the census data of 2017 on district level to determine the structural, social, and economic vulnerability of the area. Previous study conducted on 1998 census data shows that the region of Balochistan requires high focus due to the indicators list for the vulnerability. However, it is to be noted that the dynamics since 1998 census have changed as per conducted in the study. The study has observed a change in trend since 1998 whereby some factors such as accumulation of the type of structures are the same in the region but their spatial growth has been observed. Furthermore, the study also shows that there has been an increase in the number of structure of high vulnerability in order region, but their factor relatively is low and 6 | P a g e almost the same as per the previous study of 1998 census. The exposure model of population when combined with vulnerability indicators resulted in high seismic vulnerability in the region of Punjab. The economic indicators further indicated that the mentioned region is less vulnerable in economic state whereas the Balochistan region will require attention during the semis event. However, the role of population density has a greater impact on the study due to uneven distribution of population. Lastly the study further indicates the use of following data and how it can be further use in the other studies and how to apply the results in the enclosed study in order to take risk reduction measure, which is important and necessary to lessen the impact of a disaster.