An Estimation of Earthquake Death Toll in Wooden houses

Abstract

This paper discusses an effective strategy of seismic strengthening of wooden houses dominant in Japan in aim for reduciton of death toll. In the first part, we construct the equations by which the death toll in a district can be estimated in relation with the rate of seismic strengthening. It is developed by rebuilding or seismic repairing, and is worsen as aging of houses. In the second part, we applied the equation to all prefecures in Japan and estimated the temporal change of death reduction to figure out the effect of rebuilding and of changing where people live. As a result, we found out that in a case with a probability of 2% and in 2005 census data inhabitants killed would be around 90,000.