Earthquake Case Study

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The hazards that an earthquake can present are dependent on many different aspects, for example, the human factors, being factors that are influenced by humans that will affect an earthquake, are the level of development in the relevant country, the standard of infrastructure, while the physical factors are ones which are natural and cannot be controlled, being the magnitude and location of the quake and lastly the time the quake occurs. In order to properly assess whether the impact of earthquake hazards depends primarily on human factors, it is necessary to look at a range of case studies which will provide a balanced overview.
When comparing an earthquake to how it happened in an LEDC to an MEDC, an example such as the Haiti earthquake …show more content…

The social impacts of the Haitian earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, compared with the 2010 earthquake in Chile measuring a larger magnitude of 8.8 show how much human factors can influence the impacts. The amount of fatalities and injuries in Haiti was extreme, over 230,000 died and many more were injured, these impacts could be argued to have been due to human factors as the capital, Port au Prince, was poorly built. As well as this, the earthquake in Chile hit a more densely populated area, and when compared to the Chilean death toll, with the surprisingly fewer 525 deaths, it shows how being and MEDC, and thus human factors can have a large influence on the impacts of an earthquake, regardless of the physical facts that should logically suggest that Chile would have been worse …show more content…

Whereas more stable land, where the landscape is even and buildings are located in land, can make them fairly resistant to earthquake waves, the soil type can also cause issues, exacerbating the strength and leading to an increased risk of damage. This is the case in China, where many buildings were built on uneven land and due to being located in a mountainous area, rock slides and responses where made harder by the physical geography of the area, which shows how even MEDCS can be more vulnerable during larger

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