USGS Science⌕ Search

SEARCH · USGS Science

Results for “International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction,”

Search indexed USGS publications on groundwater, aquifers, geologic maps, mineral resources and earthquakes. Explore source records by subject and place.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
USGS2023

Methods and lessons for business resilience and recovery surveys

Surveys are important tools in business resilience and recovery research because of their ability to capture disaggregated economic information; however, they can be difficult and costly due to business operational dynamics and the larger challenges of disaster research. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a recent example where demand for business data was high across both research and practice. Yet, the methods and modes for collecting data were limited due to safety, health, and ethical concerns. This research seeks to address the lack of tailored guidance for conducting business resilience and recovery surveys by collecting and synthesizing instruments and best practices from previous survey efforts. These previous surveys were undertaken by a diverse group of organizations with varied research questions, objectives, and hazard events of interest. This paper discusses six broad lessons: clearly define purpose, objectives, and concepts; recognize that response rates will be low, consider disaster dynamics in the research design, address bias that can be exacerbated by disasters, take care to acknowledge the unique ethical considerations of disaster resilience surveys in the business and economic context, and verify and validate data at all stages of the survey process. These lessons, in addition to the published instruments themselves, support researchers or practitioners who wish to conduct their own business resilience and recovery surveys in the future.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2023

Modeling non-structural strategies to reduce pedestrian evacuation times for mitigating local tsunami threats in Guam

Reducing the potential for loss of life from local tsunamis is challenging for emergency managers given the need for self-protective behavior of at-risk individuals within brief windows of time to evacuate. There has been considerable attention paid to discussing the use of tsunami vertical-evacuation structures for areas where there may be insufficient time to evacuate. This strategy may not be feasible or needed for at-risk populations in island communities for multiple reasons. We examine the influence of three non-structural interventions (reducing departure delays, increasing travel speeds, and managing vegetation to create new paths) that may improve the evacuation potential for at-risk individuals in island communities and use the United States territory of Guam as our case study. We model pedestrian travel times out of a modeled inundation zone for a local tsunami generated by a M w 8.3 earthquake within the Mariana subduction zone. Evacuation-modeling results indicate that reducing departure delays has a larger impact than increasing travel speeds or creating evacuation corridors through heavy brush on reducing the number of at-risk individuals with insufficient time to evacuate. Travel times to safety are less than wave-arrival times for almost all at-risk individuals in the tsunami-hazard zone if one assumes all three interventions are implemented.

Guam↗
USGS2023

Social vulnerability and geographic access barriers to earthquake early warning education in museums and other free choice learning environments

Given the earthquake risk on the West Coast of the United States, individuals and communities require a basic understanding of ShakeAlert earthquake early warning technology, which may provide crucial seconds of warning. Free choice learning environments (FCLEs), such as museums, public libraries, and national parks, are uniquely positioned to expand the reach of earthquake early warning through educational initiatives and resources. Earthquake education in these spaces creates awareness of earthquake hazards and risk in areas where people live or visit and may also increase engagement in preparedness behavior as they are trusted sources of information in their communities. However, population demographics within the ShakeAlert states has yet to be examined; audience segmentation theories require a better understanding of the demographics of the people the system seeks to serve. Here we build upon previous typology research that examined over 150 earthquake displays around the United States and found that most did not include information about earthquake preparedness or associated protective actions. This new research shifts to a hierarchical clustering analysis that identifies seven main population groups within the ShakeAlert states. We also find that the cost of admission and the geographic distance away from FCLEs, including the potential cost and time of transportation, may lead to an urban-rural divide in visitor access. Using audience segmentation theories as related to earthquakes, we can understand critical barriers to FCLEs and opportunities for ShakeAlert education. As earthquake early warning systems expand internationally, thoughtful and equitable education initiatives are beneficial to reach critical audiences.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2024

Near-real-time earthquake-induced fatality estimation using crowdsourced data and few-shot large-language models

When a damaging earthquake occurs, immediate information about casualties (e.g., fatalities and injuries) is critical for time-sensitive decision-making by emergency response and aid agencies in the first hours and days. Systems such as the Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) were developed to provide a forecast of such impacts within about 30 min of any significant earthquake globally. However, existing disaster-induced human loss estimation systems often rely on early casualty reports manually retrieved from global traditional media, which are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and have significant time latencies. Recent approaches use keyword matching and topic modeling to identify human casualty-relevant information from social media but tend to be error-prone when dealing with complex semantics in multi-lingual text data and parsing dynamically changing and conflicting human death and injury numbers shared by various unvetted sources in social media platforms. In this work, we introduce an end-to-end framework to significantly improve the timeliness and accuracy of global earthquake-induced human loss forecasting using multi-lingual, crowdsourced social media. Our framework integrates (i) a hierarchical casualty extraction model built upon large language models, prompt design, and few-shot learning to retrieve quantitative human loss claims from social media, (ii) a physical constraint-aware, dynamic-truth discovery model that discovers the truthful human loss from massive noisy and potentially conflicting human loss claims, and (iii) a Bayesian updating loss projection model that dynamically updates the final loss estimation using discovered truths. We test the framework in real-time on a series of global earthquake events in 2021 and 2022 and show that our framework effectively automates the retrieval of casualty information faster but with comparable accuracy to those now retrieved manually by the USGS. The code associated with this work is made available at: https://github.com/SusuXu-s-Lab/Hierarchical-Earthquake-Casualty-Information-Retrieval

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2024

ShakeAlert® and schools: Incorporating earthquake early warning in school districts in Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington

The U.S. Geological Survey-managed ShakeAlert® earthquake early warning system is the first public alerting system in the United States to provide rapid mass notification when an earthquake is detected. Although public alert delivery via mobile phones began in California in 2019 followed by Oregon and Washington in 2021, little is known about what might drive widespread implementation in at-risk institutional settings such as schools. For example, there has been limited research on how to best integrate earthquake early warning into existing emergency plans, alert systems, and drills to keep school children and personnel safe in an earthquake. To address this gap, in the spring of 2022, every school district superintendent in Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington was sent a 15-min online survey. The survey assessed superintendent knowledge of ShakeAlert, preferences for alert messaging, and perceived opportunities and barriers to incorporating the system in schools. The results showed that superintendents had low awareness of ShakeAlert but held positive perceptions of the system's potential to enable life-saving protective actions. A major barrier to adoption included the perceived financial cost of implementing and maintaining the system. There were some statistically significant differences in state responses, and future research could investigate the specific needs of each state based on school district size and composition, hazard exposure, and earthquake experience. Together these findings can help inform targeted strategies to increase ShakeAlert adoption in schools and ultimately improve the safety of school children and staff during earthquakes.

Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington↗
USGS2024

Long-term communication of aftershock forecasts: The Canterbury earthquake sequence in New Zealand

On 14 February 2016, a magnitude (M)5.7 earthquake struck in Christchurch New Zealand (Aotearoa in the Maori language). The shaking caused damage to historic facades, power outages, cliff collapses, rock falls, and liquefaction but no reported injuries or fatalities. This Valentine’s Day earthquake was an aftershock in the Canterbury earthquake sequence (CES), which began on 4 September 2010 with the M7.1 Darfield Earthquake and included the destructive and fatal M6.2 Christchurch aftershock on 22 February 2011. This study, eight months after the Valentine’s Day earthquake and six years after the initiation of the CES, is the first to explore long-term aftershock forecast information and communication needs. The exploratory study also aimed to gather feedback on aftershock scenarios, an alternative form for communicating the forecast. The qualitative study involved workshops with emergency managers, public health officials, and members of the public in Christchurch. Key findings for long-term communication throughout an earthquake sequence include: 1. divergent earthquake experiences affect aftershock communication response and information needs; 2. understanding aftershock sequence behavior is foundational to sense-making when large aftershocks occur; 3. strategic earthquake sequence updates from the trusted science agency and local agencies could serve as important reminders for earthquake preparedness; 4. communication of aftershock forecast uncertainty could aid with both the credibility of the information and living with uncertainty, and 5. inclusion of impact information and preparedness advice into aftershock forecast scenarios could provide links to actionable information. The paper derives implications for research and practice of long-term communications during an aftershock sequence.

Christchurch↗
USGS2025

Population vulnerability of residents, employees, and cruise-ship passengers to tsunami hazards of islands in complex seismic regions: A case study of the U.S. Virgin Islands

Reducing the potential for loss of life from tsunamis is challenging on islands located in complex seismic regions given the multiple sources that surround islands, differences among islands in the amount of time needed to evacuate before wave arrival, and the high number of residents, employees, and tourists in tsunami-hazard zones. We examine variations in population vulnerability in island communities to multiple tsunami threats and use the United States territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), including St. Thomas Island, St. John Island, and St. Croix Island, as our case study. We estimate the tsunami-hazard exposure of residents, employees, and cruise-ship passengers on vessels docking at USVI maritime facilities, as well as model pedestrian travel times out of inundation zones for 13 credible tsunami scenarios. Results indicate that the threat to life safety in USVI posed by tsunamis is not equal among the three islands, both in terms of the magnitude of people in hazard zones and the amount of time available to evacuate for the various scenarios. The number of employees and cruise-ship passengers in tsunami-hazard zones is orders of magnitude higher than the number of residents, suggesting that risk assessments that only account for residents are under-estimating threats to life safety from tsunamis. Finally, reducing departure delays has a greater impact than increasing pedestrian travel speeds on reducing the number of people that may have insufficient time to evacuate hazard zones before wave arrival.

U.S. Virgin Islands↗
USGS2025

Meet the people where they are: Assessing user needs for aftershock forecast products in El Salvador, Mexico and the United States

Aftershock forecasts can help communities reduce their seismic risk by conveying how many aftershocks can be expected following a large earthquake, and how the expected number of aftershocks and their corresponding ground shaking evolves over time and space. Prior work finds that graphical forecast products may communicate such information better than only text or numbers. To identify which visual products can serve multiple user groups, we held workshops with members of several professions, including emergency managers, engineers, critical infrastructure operators, public health specialists, science communicators, and more. We conducted these workshops in El Salvador, Mexico and the United States to understand which forecast products may be effective across different countries. In these workshops, users performed small-group activities to elicit the types of aftershock forecast information that would support decisions in their respective roles and how this information would optimally be displayed. Maps of shaking hazards were frequently requested across all professions and countries, even for dissimilar forecast uses. The design of these maps, and other product needs, were differentiated by profession, country and other factors. Other forecast products, including those showing forecasts about the magnitudes and time periods of future aftershocks, also served a variety of users, but for different types of decisions. We found a greater variation in user needs by profession than by country, and that user needs also vary with time, communication channel and other contextual factors. We discuss practical implications for user-centered visual communication of operational aftershock forecasts.

International Journal for Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2025

National population exposure and evacuation potential in the United States to earthquake-generated tsunami threats

Previous efforts to characterize tsunami threats to people have focused primarily on individual scenarios in specific areas but have not recognized multiple scenarios across an entire country. This study addresses this gap by quantifying population exposure and evacuation potential in the United States to 102 earthquake-related, tsunami-hazard zones, including 92 local scenarios, 8 distant scenarios, and 2 probabilistic products. Geospatial path-distance modeling quantified evacuation potential and the influence of departure delays. We focused on residents to support other national, multi-hazard risk analyses. Millions of residents are in distant-tsunami zones, and hundreds of thousands of residents are in local-tsunami zones. In 41 scenarios, there is at least one resident that may have insufficient time to evacuate before wave arrival. Tens of thousands of residents may have insufficient time to evacuate from local tsunamis that impact the U.S. Pacific Northwest or Puerto Rican coastlines. The largest improvements in evacuation potential may come from reducing departure delays in some areas but may involve vertical-evacuation structures or changing land use in other areas.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2025

Variations in road exposure and traffic volumes in the United States in areas susceptible to landslides

There have been many efforts in the United States (U.S.) to identify landslide threats for specific roads, but we are unaware of any effort to examine the entire national road system. We use geospatial tools to estimate the lengths and percentages of total length of roads in landslide-susceptible areas and differentiate results by road type, jurisdiction, and susceptibility level. We summarize traffic-volume counts in landslide-susceptible areas in terms of annual and maximum hourly counts using geospatial zones based on the concept of stopping-sight distances. A substantial percentage of the U.S. road network is in areas with some level of landslide susceptibility from 35 % (by length) of all roads to 68 % of county routes. Several Interstate highways have considerable lengths of road in areas with highest landslide susceptibility. There are hundreds of sites with high hourly and annual traffic volumes in areas of highest landslide susceptibility, indicating potential threats to life safety and traffic disruption.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2025

Post-traumatic stress disorder in adult population of La Palma (Spain) after the 2021 Tajogaite eruption: Environmental and sociodemographic predictors

The adverse mental health effects of exposure to disasters have long been recognized, with earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and volcanoes (among others) contributing to anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Concerning PTSD and volcanic eruptions specifically, most studies have highlighted risk factors related to demographic and social factors (e.g., gender, age, and education), mental health, and those associated with the experience of the volcanic eruption (e.g., having evacuated). Establishing the demographic scope of those more likely to suffer PTSD following volcanic eruptions as well as understanding the aggravating factors is key to best tailor precautionary measurements and psychological interventions. In this study, we supplement these analyses by investigating the role of environmental contaminants (specifically, exposure to tephra falls and degraded air quality) together with demographic, health, and hazard experiences in contributing to PTSD. We focus on data collected after the 2021 eruption of the Tajogaite volcano (Cumbre Vieja, La Palma, Spain). Our results show that in addition to sex, education, distance from the volcano, evacuation status, health issues related to the eruption, and mental health antecedents, exposure to volcanic gas but not tephra is associated with higher PTSD scores. Our findings establish a picture of the prevalence of PTSD symptoms in various demographics groups and aggravating factors following the 2021 eruption of the Tajogaite volcano. We further call for an extended investigation (and potentially, ultimately, a mechanistic explanation) of the role of air quality (as a potential synergic hazard) in shaping mental health following exposure to a primary hazard, such as a volcanic eruption.

Canary Islands, Island of La Palma↗
USGS2025

Estimated average annualized losses from potential building damage and fatalities due to earthquake-generated tsunamis in the United States

Earthquake-generated tsunamis represent substantial economic threats to states and territories in the United States (U.S.), but we are unaware of any effort to quantify potential impacts at the national level. This gap is partially due to the lack of nationally consistent data on tsunamigenic sources and associated return periods. This study addresses this issue and provides estimates of average annualized losses (AAL) for potential residential fatalities and capital stock losses associated with building damage (i.e., structural, non-structural, contents, and inventory damage) in the U.S. by curating tsunami-hazard information based on deterministic scenarios and probabilistic approaches, calculating potential losses, and estimating return periods where necessary. This assessment was done for the U.S. West Coast, Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. Pacific Territories, and U.S. Atlantic Territories. We estimate that earthquake-generated tsunamis that could affect these states and territories collectively represent $1 billion in potential AAL with 79 % of losses due to residential fatalities and 21 % of losses due to capital stock losses from building damage. We identify AAL variations based on county and county equivalents, states and territories, geographic regions, return periods, and departure-delay assumptions for evacuating residents. Results include high AAL values for potential fatalities in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Pacific Northwest region, high AAL values for potential building-related damage in Hawaii and California, and high building- and population-loss ratios for county equivalents in Alaska and U.S. territories.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2025

Developing empirical fragility functions for lava flow building damage

Fragility functions are vital tools in volcanic risk assessments to evaluate the probability of damage to structures at given hazard intensities. Traditionally, lava flow damage is assumed to be binary , whereby in contact with lava results in complete destruction and not in contact with lava remains undamaged. However, past studies present examples of structures exhibiting resistance to lava and not destruction . Developing empirical fragility functions requires damage data . We collected data from field campaigns and aerial imagery to assess damage across three case studies: 2021 Cumbre Vieja lava flows, La Palma, 2018 lower East Rift Zone lava flows, Kīlauea, Hawaiʻi, and 2014–2015 Fogo lava flows, Cabo Verde. This involved manually digitising 4545 structure footprints and assigning types and damage state categories to 10,439 structures. Of the impacted structures, 6 % were classified as damaged (not destroyed). Using this dataset, we developed the first empirical fragility functions from multiple eruptions for assessing lava flow damage, for masonry, metal , and timber building types. The functions reflect the probability of a structure sustaining any of six levels of damage severity given final lava flow thickness. Lava flows thicker than 6 m generally destroy structures, but some structures, particularly masonry buildings or those with a circular shape, can resist flows thinner than 6 m. The fragility functions reflect that lava flow impacts are not binary, and that structure types and shape are important. These empirical fragility functions can differentiate between structural attributes, thereby enhancing damage, risk, and impact assessments for lava flows, for places with similar building types.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2026

Earthquake-hazard exposure of residents with potential access and functional needs in the United States

Earthquake response plans and earthquake early warning (EEW) systems designed for general populations may not consider potential access and functional needs (AFN) of individuals with physical, sensory, cognitive, or social limitations. Previous efforts to map the distribution of these populations have focused on social-vulnerability indices that ignore or oversimply these limitations. The descriptive and exploratory analysis summarized in this United States (U.S.) case study addresses this gap by identifying and integrating spatially explicit data for AFN-related residential populations, earthquake hazards, and county and county equivalents for the conterminous U.S., Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. We focus on 13 AFN-related attributes that relate to an individual's ability to access information contained in an EEW alert, to understand and process earthquake information or observed ground shaking, and to take self-protective actions based on this information and physical cues of an earthquake. Depending on the demographic attribute, there are millions to tens of millions of U.S. residents with AFN-related attributes in areas considered to have varying likelihoods (2%, 10%, and 50%) of exceedance of a damaging earthquake in the next 50 years. Although these amounts represent low percentages at the national level, the percentage of individuals with AFN-related attributes in many counties and county equivalents substantially exceeds national percentages. No one county, county equivalent, U.S. state, or U.S. territory has the highest percentage of individuals in all AFN-related attributes; therefore, future efforts to increase individual resilience to earthquakes may benefit from understanding the local context of individuals with potential access and functional needs.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction↗
USGS2026

Deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing university student experiences with earthquake early warning in the United States: Evaluating language planning and technology access

The growing literature on deaf and hard of hearing (DHH+) populations and disasters demonstrates that emergency communication (including alerts) is not reaching global DHH + individuals with dangerous impacts for morbidity and mortality. This is the first research study in the U.S. to qualitatively explore the experiences of DHH + persons with earthquake early warning (EEW) through group-based dialogue sessions. The study investigates eight DHH + university students'past earthquake experiences, access to EEW alerts, and perceptions of ShakeAlert Ⓡ , an EEW system for detecting earthquakes and alerting residents of California, Oregon, and Washington. Findings highlight key gaps in disaster alert usability within four thematic areas: lack of messaging in participants' language(s), unclear alert messaging, deficient message delivery mechanisms for deafblind persons, and insufficient access to earthquake information and training that leads to dependence on informal information networks. Weaknesses identified in these four themes reduce DHH + trust in EEW systems and compromise the capacity of alert recipients to take swift protective action or to mentally prepare before shaking starts. The study also underscores structural factors such as insufficient linguistic representation in disaster language planning and technology design, which ignores the linguistic and sensory access needs of DHH + individuals. Building on disaster language planning frameworks, we recommend involving DHH + populations to co-develop EEW alerts. By centering DHH + perspectives, this research contributes to ongoing efforts to ensure that EEW systems reach everyone.

California↗