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Eartkquake Death Tolls
Leon Knopoff, Didier Sornette
To cite this version:
Leon Knopoff, Didier Sornette. Eartkquake Death Tolls. Journal de Physique I, EDP Sciences, 1995,
5 (12), pp.1681-1668. �10.1051/jp1:1995223�. �jpa-00247166�
Classification
Physics
Abstracts02.50-1 91.30Px
Earthquake Death Tolls
Leon
Knopoff(1)
and DidierSomette(~)
(~)
Department
ofPhysics
and Institute ofGeophysics
andPlanetary Physics, University
of Califomia, LosAngeles,
California 90095, USA(~) Laboratoire de
Physique
de la Matière Condensée, CNRS URA 190,Université de
Nice-Sophia Antipolis,
B-P. 71, Parc Valrose, 06108 Nice Cedex 2, France(Received12 August1995, accepted
31August 1995)
Abstract. In the risk and insurance literature, the
(one-point)
distributions of fosses in raturai disasters have beenproposed
to be characterizedby
"fat tait" po~ver laws, 1.e. verylarge
destruction may occur witha
non-vanishing
rate. A naivehypothesis
of uncorrelated Poissonian occurrence would suggest that the fosses aresolely
characterized by theproperties
of the
underlying
power la~v distributions, i.e. thelonger
we watt, the more dramatic ~vill be trielargest
disaster, which coula be as much as a finite fraction of the totalpopulation
or thetotal wealth of a country. We find indeed that the numbers Z of deaths in the very
largest
earthquakes of this Century can be described
by
a power law distributionP(Z)
mZ~(~+~~
with à = I.o + 0.3,implying
an unbounded behavior for trie mostdevastating earthquakes. However,
the distribution of the number of deaths per capita in each country m this Century has a well- defined maximum value,
suggesting
that the naiveextrapolation
of the power law distributionis incorrect and that the
understanding
of correlations is necessary to ascertain the level ofnsk from natural disasters. The
one-point
distributionsonly provide
an upper bound of theexpected
risk. We propose aspeculative
mortel to explain the correlations bet~veen deaths inlarge earthquakes
and their countries of occurrence: ~ve suggest thatlarge
ancrent civihzationsthat have matured into
large present-day populations
were the beneficianes of isolation frommarauders due to the relative
geographic protection by
tectonic processeslargely
of an orogenic nature.1.
Earthquake
Size DistributionThe estimation of risk due to natural disasters is of
increasing importance
in view of thegrowth
of the world'spopulation
and its concentration in areas prone toearthquakes,
volcaniceruptions, typhoons
or floods. In the risk and insurancehterature,
the(one-point)
distributions of losses bave beenproposed
to be characterizedby
"fat tail" powerlaws,
i e. verylarge
destruction may occur M.ith a
non-vanishing
rate. How do these distributions evolve overlong
times and what are thepossible
consequences of correlations between events onlong-
term msurance
policies?
A naivehypothesis
of uncorrelated Poissoman occurrence wouldsuggest
that the losses aresolely
characterizedby
theproperties
of theunderlymg
power la~K=Q
Les Editions dePhysique
19951682 JOURNAL DE
PHYSIQUE
I N°12distributions,
1-e- thelonger
wewait,
the more dramatic will be thelargest
disaster, which could be as much as a finite fraction of the totalpopulation
or the total wealth of acountry.
Is this a valid
assumption?
We address thisquestion using rank-ordering
statistics on the distribution ofearthquake
fatalities Z derived from historicaldata,
which has beenproposed
to be a robust measure of losses.
It is well-kno~vn that "small"
earthquakes
are distributed in sizeaccording
to theGutenberg-
Richter power
law, P(E)dE
~-
E~(1+~~/~),
where E is the energy released in theearthquakes.
For
example,
a detailedanalysis Ill
of the World-Wide Harvardearthquake catalog (19îî 1995)
shows that b= 1.00 + 0.02 for shallow
earthquakes
withmagnitudes
less than a valuein the 7.1 to 7.6 range.
Laiger earthquakes
can be also describedby
a power law distribution but with alarger exponent
b= 2.3 + 0.3. The cross-over between these two
populations
isill-defined and we caution that there is no direct evidence to confirm the
hypothesis
that thelarge-earthquake
branch is indeed a power law. Infact,
a gamma distribution(power
law truncatedby
anexponential roll-off)
also fits the entire suite ofearthquake
moments from the smallest to thelargest satisfactorily [2j.
Another well-documented system is that of theearthquakes
of the Southern Californiacatalog (1932 -1995):
in this case, b= 1.00 + 0.02
up to the
largest magnitude observed,
J£I~v CÎ 7.5Ill.
We caution that ailexisting earthquake catalogs
span a time scale which issignificantly
shorter than the time interval between theearthquakes
withmagnitudes
in the rangeMw
=f 8.5 9.5 known to occur.2. Distribution of Death Tolls
A first
step
toward the assessment of the level ofrisk associated withearthquakesis
to determine the distribution function of the sizes of these disasters. The destructive power of anearthquake
results from a
conjunction
of severalfactors, including
themagnitude
and moment of theearthquake,
thedepth
offocus,
the orientation of theearthquake fault,
the distribution ofpopulation
m theneighborhood
of theearthquake,
site effects such asliquefaction, landslides,
the nature of thesoil,
thequality
of the infrastructureincluding
failure ofutility lifelines,
etc.In
addition,
one should take into account collateraldamage
due tofire,
tsunami, environmentalcontamination,
etc.The
physical
sizes ofearthquakes,
the economic losses and the deaths that result from earth-quakes
are each measures ofmagnitude
of risk. As an introduction to theproblem,
consider first the number of human deaths in eachearthquake
worldwide m thiscentury [3j.
LetZi
>22
> >Zn
> >ZN
be the rank-ordered number of deaths in eachearthquake.
Forexample, Zi corresponds
to theTangshan,
Chinaearthquake
of 1976.Although
deaths due toearthquakes
are rare occurrences, the observation of a few tens of thelargest
cases is sufficient to determine the distribution withgood precision using rank-ordering techniques;
these meth- ods wereoriginally
introduced in thestudy
of the statistics oflanguages
[4j and then afterwardm a
variety
of fields[5j, including earthquakes
[1]. Therank-ordering
distribution is the sameas theicumulative distribution but with an
interchange
of axes.However,
the statisticalanaly-
ses of the two are different: the statistics of the
rank-ordering procedure
is concerned with the uncertainties in trie values of Z while the cumulative distribution is concerned with the uncer- tainties of the order numbers, which are integers.Here,
we focus attention on those extremeevents which characterize the distribution at the
large
end of the tail. In the case of power lawdistributions of the
largest
events, the tail of the distribution isdramatically
constramed, anda
surprisingly good
recovery of theexponent
con be derived from anextremely
small data set.The
reliability
of the retrieval of theexponent
bas beenexplored
in detail m [1].Z~
o
i
i io ioo iooo
n
Fig.
1.Log-log rank-ordering plot
of the distribution of deaths perearthquake:
Zn is the nthlargest
number of deaths perearthquake,
indecreasing
order. The best fit to the entrieshaving
ranks 1 to 25 is shownby
thestraight line,
which defines a power law for the extreme tail of the distribution(see text).
In
Figure
1 we show thelog-log
rank-order distribution of Z. Theequation logZn
-~
=logn
+C,
with à= 1-o + 0.3 and C a
constant,
1-e- thatZn
~-n~l/~
isa
good
fità
up to rank around 25. We recover the distribution
P(Z)
~-Z~ll+~) characterizing
the very+m
largest
death tolls~ This is obtainedusing
theequation
NÎ~ P(Z)dZ
m n, which expresses that there aretypically
n values of Zlarger
than orequal
toZn
out of a set of N entries(see Ill
for a moi-e precise derivation and the
appendix).
The error bar +0.3 on the determination ofthe
exponent
à results from trie usual square rootuncertainty
of the maximum likelihood esti-mator
[fil,
from asystematic
biasresulting
from the estimatoritself,
as well as the existence ofa crossover to a different distribution for the
larger ranks,
whichcorrespond
to smaller deathtolls
(see Ill
fordiscussion).
The above result
suggests
that thelonger
wewait,
the more dramatic will be thelargest disaster,
which could be asignificant
fraction of thepopulation
of acountry.
If à <1,
thenzi
the average number < Z > of deaths per
earthquake
isgiven by
< Z >=Î ZP(Z)dZ =f
~
~Z)~~,
whereZi
is the maximum observed size. SinceZi
grows asN~/~
withN,
then1-
< Z >
diverges
as < Z >~-Nl~l. Practically,
this means that the number of deathsZi
due to thesmgle
most disastrousearthquake
among the total of Nearthquakes
accounts fora finite fraction of the total deaths in all
earthquakes,
~vhich is ,àT < Z >.Indeed,
the above estimategives
the finite fraction~
~~
=f ~
~, confirming
our statement; a morerigorous
< Z >
derivation is given in
[7j, p.169. Thus,
forexample
if à= 2
/3,
the correct formulapredicts
that thelargest
eventcorresponds
on average to1/3
of the total.1684 JOURNAL DE
PHYSIQUE
I N°12If à tutus out to be
larger
thon 1, the average number < Z > of deaths perearthquake
iswell-defined.
Ho~vever,
its standard deviation <Z~
> < Z>~ diverges, meaning
that as time goes on there arelarger
andlarger
fluctuations. Thepractical
consequence is that theprobability
of human extinction(or
theprobability
of ~'ruin" remainsimportant.
Theseideas,
put inquantitative
terms in[8j, rely
on theassumption
that the power law distribution is limitedonly by
the finite size of thepopulation,
and hence that thepossibility
of an extinctionis finite eiren if
quite
small.3. Per
Capita
Death TollWe show that the above estimates may be
pessimistic
becausethey
overlook the existence of correlations between different measures of destruction mearthquakes.
We propose that a more sensible measure of the impact ofearthquake
destruction on humanactivity
is a irariable thatmcreases with time over a
long time,
normahzedby
a relevant measure of wealth.Indeed,
forgovernments
and insurance companies[9],
the fundamentalquestion
is theadequate
coverageof the risk. One
strategy
is to divide the region at risk into districts andapply
an estimate for each districtsseparately. Thus,
inprinciple,
one could focus the resources of theinsuring agencies
on trieregions
atgreater
risks. For the purposes ofconstructing
anexample.
supposethe
region
at risk to be the entireearth,
and the districts to be the individual countries. On the basis of our assumedlocal,
i-e-national, strategy,
we would thenexpect
agreater
risk foran
earthquake
pronecountry,
thon in atectonically
stable part of the vTorld. ~vhile this is a trivial statement, and iseasily
extended to smallerregions
at risk with smaller subdivisions intodistricts,
the moi-eimportant question
is to estimate the risk to beapplied
to each district[10].
As an introduction to the
problem
of thedevelopment
of a riskstrategy
that takes intoaccotint the cumulative value of
loss,
we take as our estimate of risk the percapita
number ofhuman deaths due to
earthquakes
m thiscentury
for eachcountry,
referred to thepopulation
in 1973
[11,12].
Ourjustification
for thisprocedure
is that what isimportant economically
is not the absolute value of the loss but itsmagnitude
relative to thesurrounding
wealth.Also,
the
analysis
ofsingle
events can tell ussomething
overlong times, only
if we make reason- ableassumptions
on their coi-relations in time and space. iveattempt
to obtain informationregarding
theimportant
correlations between losses over arelatively long
time.Let
Di
>D2
> >Dn
> >DN
be trie rank-ordered percapita
deaths for eachcountry.
For
example, Dl
" 9.36 x
10~~, D2
" 8.39
x10~3
andD3
" 4.95
x10~~ correspond
toAimenia,
Turkmenia and Guatemala.
Figure
2 shows three types ofplots: a) logDn
as a function oflog
nb) Dn
as a function oflog
n;c) log Dn
as a function of n. Fioni examination ofFigure 2a,
it is clear that the
log-log plot
is notlinear,
which would haine defined a power la~v distribution, If1ve insist onfitting
a power law distribution. ~ve find thatonly
about the firstlargest
10entries con be fitted with
exponent
à = 0.7 + 0.4.Figure
2b shows aslightly
better fit: a linear relation betweenDn
andlog
n is areasonably good description
of the data up to rauk about là. In this case, wegel
the distributionP(D)
~-
e~~/~°
whereDo
"
(8 +1)
x10~3 Finally,
Figure
2c shows a remarkable lineardependence
oflogDn
as a function of n for the first 3î countries out of the 47 countries with deaths due toearthquakes
in thiscentury. Beyond entry 37,
there is a roll-off ~vhich may be attributable to finite size effects, smce the last ten pointscorrespond
to countrieshaving
about 200 or lessdeaths;
afigure
that is very smallcompared
to the number of deaths for the
largest
entries in thelist,
~vhich areroughlj<
4 x 10~ for China.1.5
x10~
forJapan,
10~ forItàly,
etc. Trie best fit islog Dn
=
log Dm~x
an, with Dn~~x =f10~~
and a ci 0.18. Thus trie distribution is
P(D)
~-
D~l
for D <Dm~x
and is 0 for D >D,i,ax.
Let us stress that this distribution is
completely
different from a purepowerlaw D~(1+~)
lvithà ~ 0 and with no cut-off. Ei~en for à as small as
10~~ (this
is all trie more true forlarger à).
a
o o
° ° o o
o
°a oo
ooo
c ~~°°~
~ %b
~$~« ~~W
~ ~
îJ
0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1,0 1,2 1,4 1,6 1,8 2.0
log
n1°
a)
D~
o o
u
o~ oo
0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1,0 1,2 1,4 16 18 2,0
'°gio"
b)
~c
ço~ °
1
oo
o
~
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
n ~)
Fig.
2. The DN are Îhe rank-ordered pet capita deaths for each country.a) log
Dn as a functionof
logn; b)
Dn as a function oflogn; c) log
D~ as a function of n: m this case, thestraight
hne fit defines the distributionP(D)
+~
D~~ for D < Dma~ and 0 for D > D,»ax.
1686 JOURNAL DE
PHYSIQUE
I N°12~~
ÎÔJo
o
i io ioo iooo
n
Fig.
3.Log-log rank-ordering
of the distribution of nationalpopulations
pN in 1994(pi corresponds
to
China, etc.).
The linear fit defines a power law distribution with exponent ~t = 1+ 0.3 for the 50 mostpopulous
countries.trie
representation (a) si~owing IogDn
as a function ofIogn qualifies
as trie best fit toD~(~+ô),
as have been checked with
synthetic
tests[13]. Therefore,
therepresentation (c) showing
alinear
dependence
oflogDn
as a function of n is characteristic of a distribution with a limite upper cut-cif. These results shows that power la~v behavior with nonzero à for the per capita distribution is trie poorest fit of trie threeattempts. Despite
trie existence of the power law distributionD~(~+~)
for trie death toit perearthquake,
theimportant
result of thisanalysis
isthat there is a well-defined maximum number of deati~s per
capita Dmax
that seems to have beenadequately sampled
even for the limitedearthquake history
of thiscentury.
The value ofDmax
ismainly
constrainedby
the entrieshaving
trielarge
ranks up to 37 whose deaths percapita
range frein10~~
to10~~;
nevertheless the entries with the lowestranks,
1-e- those with thelargest
numbers of deaths percapita,
arequite compatible
with this determination. Whilewe bave no
exploration
for theD~~ dependence
for D <Dmax,
we stress that theimportant
result is trie existence of the cut-cif.4. Discussion
TO
summarize,
the distribution of the number of deaths perearthquake
is a power law withexportent
à ci 1. The same law halas for tl~e distribution of trie total number of deaths due toearthquakes
in each country, wl~ich is reasonable in view of tl~estability properties
of sums of variables distributed witl~ power laws(Lévy
laws are stable laws witl~ respect toaddition).
However,
tl~e distribution of deatl~ per capita for countries in thiscentury
bas a well-defined upperlimit,
le- there is asharp
cut-off to tl~e distribution. How con we rationalize tl~isparadox?
A
rank-ordenng analysis
of tl~e distribution of nationalpopulations
sl~own inFigure
3 shows tl~at theprobability P(p)
that acountry
has p inl~abitants is givenby P(p)
cip~(~+P)
witl~p ci 1 for tanks up to
50,
1-e- for the 50 mostpopulated
countries. If the death toit peteartl~quake (or
tl~e total number of deatl~s petcountry)
and tl~e nationalpopulation
wereuncorrelated,
we coulasimply
deduce the distribution of the death toit D petcapita, using
D
mw
Z/p.
Tl~e distribution of a variable which is tl~e ratio of twovariables,
eacl~ with power lawdistributions,
is itself a power law with an exportentequal
ta tl~at of tl~e variable in tl~enumerator, since in an uncorrelated universe tl~e
largest
value of tl~e ratio occurs wl~en tl~enumerator
explores
tl~e tait of its distribution while the denominator remains in the center ofits own distribution
(this argument
is correct if p is bounded from below and isnonzero).
Dur result is in
disagreement
with thissimple argument,
but insteadsuggests
that there isa
strong
correlation between tl~e deatl~ toi] ineartl~quakes
andpopulation.
Thismight
seem aposteriori
a trivial statement but it isinteresting
ta see it confirmedbjr
a statisticalanalysis.
Tl~is
example provides
a non-trivial case wl~ereimportant
correlationsdestroy
powerlaws, showing
apossible
outcome of theinterplay
between power law toits and correlation. Thesimplest
correlation betweencountry
size andeartl~quake
deatl~ toi] is tl~e obvious fact tl~at deatl~ toit increases witl~population.
A secondtype
of correlations is tl~at destruction and death are moreprobable
in poor countries or in countries witl~ poor construction standards. Amore subtle correlation tl~at we would like ta
suggest
is tl~atlarge populations
are often found intectonically active, eartl~quake
proue areas. Wespeculate
that tl~edevelopment
of ancientcivilizations,
1-e- thedevelopment
oflarge
communalpopulations,
teckplace
because of geo-graphicaI isolation,
inducedby
tectonic processes of mountainbuilding
thatpresented
raturai defenses.Examples
of sucl~ ancient civilizations are to be found in Anatolia(Turkey), China, Greece, India, Japan,
Java(Indonesia), Mexico, Persia, Peru,
Rome. Tl~e absence of tectonicdefences in tl~e
plains promoted
diffusionby
marauders and l~ence tl~e incubation processes necessary todevelop large populations
coula trot emerge. Tl~egrowtl~
of tl~esepopulations
has continued to thisday.
It was muchlater,
in the middle âges, thatglobal
tradeemerged
as aneven more
patent
force that allowed for tl~edevelopment
oflarge populations
in tl~eplains,
for
example,
of nortl~ern and westernEurope.
And theexploration
anddevelopment
of North America teckplace
because of these more patent forces as well. We note tl~at otl~er studies baveproposed
correlations betweenearthquake
activeregions
and thedevelopment
of l~umanpopulations [14]
and betweeneartl~quakes
andemerging
infectionsils]
and it remains to beseen if these issues are components of the correlations that must be
quantified
for aglobal
insurance
policy.
In thisregard,
we find that the distribution ofpopulation
sizes of countriesin tl~e death toit
earthquake
list is very diiferent frein that of tl~ecomplete
set. Aspointed
eut, tl~issuggests
tl~at tl~e occurrence ofeartl~quakes
may influencepopulation growtl~.
In sum, our results stress tl~e importance of
taking
into account correlations between tl~e number of casualties ineartl~quake
events in order to define a more relevantglobal
insurancepolicy
tl~an bas been considered to tl~is time.Acknowledgments
We are
grateful
to C. Vanneste and Y.Y.Kagan
for useful discussions. Tl~is work bas beenpartially supported by
tl~e CNRS-NSF InternationalCooperation
program, and is Publicationno. 223 of tl~e Soutl~em Califomia
Eartl~quake
Center and Publication no. 4305 of tl~e Institute ofGeophysics
andPlanetary Physics, University
ofCalifomia,
LosAngeles.
Appendix
AConsider a stochastic process m which the outcome
E,
which we call trie energygenerically,
has the distribution
P(E)dE
=
)dE, il
~
1688 JOURNAL DE
PHYSIQUE
I N°12with
Em;n
= 1 < E < cc; then C
= p.
Suppose
that N events occur within agiven
time interval. LetEi
>E2
> >En
> >EN
be the energies of the events listed indescending
order. The
probability F(En)dEn
that the energy for the nth order e,rent beequal
toEn
1&>ithindEn
is[si
F(En)dEn
=
(~) (l /~ P(E)dE) (~) /~ P(E)dE) P(En)dEn (2)
n
~~
~ ~l
~,~
~ ~for an
arbitrary
distributionP(E).
For the powerlaw, F(En
has apeak
atEz~~
=fi] ~/~,
wl~icl~ recovers and makesprecise
tl~escaling
law for tl~e rank ordered values stated in tl~e text, IfP(E)
isgiven by
the power law(Il, F(En)
con beexpanded
around tl~is maximum asà2
~n(~FlEn)
"
FlEll~~) ~
~~2
~
(En Ell~~)~
+, n ~>iiax
whicl~ allows us to
get
an estimate of tl~e standard deviation ofEn tl~rough
tl~e calculation ofAEn
e<(En Ez~~)~ >~/~,
wl~ere tl~e brackets indicate tl~at tl~e statistical average is taken,We obtain
m
-
l~jn/+ ~1~~~. 13)
References
iii
SornetteD., Knopoff L,, Kagan
Y,Y. and VannesteC.,
J.Geophys. Res.,
submitted.[2]
Kagan
Y.Y,, Seismicmoment-frequency
relation for shallow earthquakes:regional
comparison, preprint(1995).
[3j Lomnitz C., Fundamentals of
Earthquake
Prediction(Wiley,
New York,1994).
[4]
Zipf
G-K-, Human behavior and trieprinciple
of least-effort(Addison-Wesley, Cambridge~ 1949).
[5] Gumbel E.J.~ Statistics of extremes
(Columbia University
Press,New-York, 1960).
[6] Hill
B.M.,
Ann. Statistics 3(1975)
l163-l174.[7] Feller W., An introduction ta
probability theory
and itsapplications,
Vol. 2 (J.Wiley,
NewYork, 1966).
[8]
Kagan Y.Y., Earthquake
size distribution andearthquake
msurance, preprint(1995).
[9] Abbott A., Nature 372
(1994)
212-213.[loi
JohnstonA.C.,
Seismotectonicinterpretations
and conclusions from stable continental regionseismicity database, m: The
earthquake
of stable continental regions, Electric Power ResearchInstitute,
Palo Alto(Cahfornia)
A.C. Johnston et ai.Eds.,
Vol. l, pp. 4-1 4-103.iii]
The Times Atlas of trieWorld,
sth ed.(Times Books,
London,1975).
[12] Because the
political
boundaries of the world change with arelatively
short time constant, the definition of a nationis
ephemeral.
We bave considered trie nations thatemerged
from triebreakup
of trie Soviet Union as
mdependent
entities for these purposes.Yugoslavia,
Indonesia, New Guinea and others aresingle
entriesm our tabulation.
[13] We thank C. Vanneste for these simulations.
[14]
King
G.,Bailey
G. andSturdy
D., J.Geopàys.
Res. 99(1994)
20 063.[15] Earthquakes and