Earthquakes and tsunami disasters happen suddenly, devastating cities in just a few minutes. For decision makers to manage such disasters, they need current information on the status of their cities, but all information is collected separately and on paper now. All disaster-related information should be integrated to support decision making. To develop such an integrated system, Peru and Japan launched a new SATREPS project, “Development of Integrated Expert System for Estimation and Observation of Damage Level of Infrastructure in Lima Metropolitan Area,” in 2021. The project consists of four groups. Group 1 is related to earthquake and tsunami hazards, estimating the level of shaking and predicting the damage due to tsunami. Group 2 is related to damage detection/estimation, using sensing devices to estimate the level of damage to buildings and other infrastructure. Group 3 is related to understanding the damage over a wide area through satellite images, and also to the integration of all information from Groups 1 to 3. Group 4 is related to developing the capacity to utilize the integrated expert system. This special issue has been organized to present the progress accomplished in the first two years and to share the project’s achievements. It covers the fields of earthquake hazards, building and infrastructure damage estimation, damage estimation with satellite imagery, and human loss estimation.

Evaluation of site amplification factors (SAFs) of seismic waves has been one of the important issues for evaluating seismic hazards. The authors have proposed a deep neural network (DNN) model in order to cost-effectively and accurately estimate SAF from microtremor horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio (MHVR). In this study, we assessed the SAFs in southern Lima, Peru by estimating from MHVRs and DNN. First, we validated the applicability of the DNN model to Lima by estimating the SAFs from the MHVRs observed at seismic stations in Lima. From the comparison with the observed SAFs derived from spectral inversion technique, we confirmed that the SAFs in Lima were accurately estimated by the DNN model. The SAFs in the southern Lima including Chorrillos and Villa El Salvador districts were evaluated by applying the DNN model to the observed MHVRs at approximately 250 sites. We found that large amplifications at low frequency around 1 Hz were expected in the southeastern coastal areas formed by eolian sands whereas smaller amplification were estimated in the northwestern areas mainly located on alluvial deposits.

In seismic design, intensity parameters that represent seismic demand are commonly used. A probabilistic seismic hazard assessment is an accurate way of assessing seismic demand, based on a set of parameters that represent the seismicity of a region. However, because some regions lack sufficient information, the selection of these parameters can be controversial. In Peru, selecting a maximum earthquake magnitude (M_max) for regional seismic hazard assessments has proven to be a challenging task due to the limited available information concerning of large-magnitude events. This study evaluated the M_max for subduction earthquakes using scaling relationships, empirical evidence, and the extreme value statistics (Kijko and Bayesian) approach. The seismic catalog was updated to February 2022 and divided into 19 subduction seismic sources (5 interface and 14 intraslab). The results showed that the obtained M_max are within the range of M_w 8.7–9.0 for the interface and M_w 7.6–8.1 for the intraslab sources, which unlike the M_max values established in previous regional seismic hazard assessments, are more consistent with the historical and instrumental seismicity and rupture models.

The conjunction of seismic records and site effect parameters can lead to the adequate estimation of seismic indexes in urban areas. In this regard, this study uses the map of soil amplification factors obtained in previous studies and the availability of time history waveforms at different locations throughout Metropolitan Lima and Callao to estimate the geospatial distribution of maximum values of horizontal acceleration after the occurrence of earthquakes. Results for three earthquakes of intermediate magnitude and distinct epicenter locations are publicly available in an online system created within the framework of this study (Amaru Peru) and showed that amplified motions could be mainly observed in the lowlands of populated slopes as well as in the eolian sandy deposits.

The Lima metropolitan area is in a prone earthquake zone, which is exposed to a seismic gap; this can result in Mw 8.9 megathrust earthquake in the central Peru. After the Pisco earthquake in 2007, risk management policies changed in Peru and are improving annually. Thus, more resources are destinated to assessing earthquake hazard, vulnerability, and risk in districts of the Lima metropolitan area mainly; nevertheless, they are limited to cover in detailed the whole extension of probable affected area after this potential megathrust earthquake. Data of buildings in the Lima metropolitan area were analyzed in this paper, to provide useful information in the development of rapid methodologies of identification of buildings. The Japan Peru Center for Earthquake Engineering and Disaster Mitigation (CISMID) gathered these data from 2010 to 2021 in field surveys to conduct vulnerability and risk studies; the survey of building characteristics consisted of obtain mainly the number of stories, predominant material, structural systems, type of occupancy, and state of conservation. Vulnerability and risk studies for districts of the Lima metropolitan area were conducted by considering one representative building in one block. Results showed that the predominant material in the Lima metropolitan area is masonry, used in different structural systems, such as confined masonry and other which are nonengineered structures. Also, two-story buildings are predominant in the target area, followed by one and three-stories buildings. Risk assessment for the Lima metropolitan area and the study area were conducted using the data from the characterization of structural typologies obtained in this study. Approximately, 47.72% and 58.67% of buildings presented a very high-risk level in the Lima metropolitan area and the study area, respectively, under the expected earthquake scenario due to the seismic gap in the central Peru.

Structural health monitoring based on vibration measurements is a process that implements the instrumentation of sensors and methodologies to provide information regarding the condition of a structure, which allows the evaluation of the safety and integrity of structural systems. Because of this, in the past decades, several algorithms have been developed; among them, the wavelet transform is considered an efficient method for the elimination of the error contained in the acceleration recorded by the sensors. However, due to the complex nature of earthquakes and the particularity of the structural systems, the parameters used by the wavelet transform for error elimination in the seismic response are frequently variable. This paper proposes a method to get the seismic response of a base-isolated building subjected to ground-strong motions through numerical simulations of a mathematical model of the structure, using synthetic records based on historical seismic events occurring in Peru. In this way, the research found that the optimal intrinsic parameters of the building correspond to an approximate frequency interval of 0.20 to 6.25 Hz. Finally, the results show that this method is valid and can be reliably applied in structural health monitoring systems.

Non-engineered confined masonry dwellings are characterized by having different masonry units. One of the most common cases in the Lima Metropolitan Area is that this type of dwelling has its first floors with handmade solid units and upper floors are composed of industrial horizontal hollowed (tubular) bricks. Nonlinear static analysis by the incrementally increasing loading pattern is inadequate to estimating earthquake response of structures with height irregularity, such as non-engineered confined masonry dwellings, because the loading pattern changes during the history of reversal loads due to damaging earthquakes. This paper presents the effect of nonlinear static analysis using adaptive loading patterns in confined masonry dwellings when the type of masonry units changes drastically. Nonlinear static analyses are applied using non-adaptive and adaptive displacement-based pushover procedures. A series of nonlinear time history analyses are also conducted to measure the error in the estimation of the seismic response. The adaptive loading pattern is based on displacement approximation by the modal analysis at each step of incremental-increasing loads. The load pattern is updated considering the modal analysis of an equivalent linear model using the equivalent stiffness of the structure at the secant of the maximum previous response. The application of the adaptive loading pattern in nonlinear static analysis significantly approximates the earthquake response of confined masonry dwellings with height irregularity provided by the change of masonry bricks.

The restoration period of the water supply system in Lima, Peru, after a scenario earthquake was estimated in this study. To achieve the objective, the probabilistic assessment model for post-earthquake residual capacity of the utility lifeline system initially proposed by Nojima and Sugito (2005) and revised by following related studies was employed. The dataset of water distribution pipelines was provided by Potable Water and Sewer System Service in Lima, Peru (SEDAPAL), and the spatial distribution of ground motion with a moment magnitude of 8.6 was considered as a scenario earthquake in this study. The water disruption was anticipated to continue for approximately one month in certain districts of Lima, Peru. The estimated smallest water supplying ratio was 21.1% in Villa El Salvador after the scenario earthquake.

Lifelines such as drinking water and sewage systems provide the means and conveyance for daily critical services, and they are essential systems for recovery operations after a damaging earthquake. Therefore, earthquake damage to lifeline components needs to be reliably assessed for a possible future seismic scenario. This study presents an earthquake damage assessment of buried pipeline networks in the Lima Metropolitan Area (LMA). It includes seismic hazard analysis, a review of pipeline network datasets, and the selection of empirical fragility functions. Deterministic seismic hazard analysis was performed for an inter-plate earthquake scenario using ground motion prediction equations and site conditions to compute the distribution of the peak ground velocity (PGV). Recommendations are offered for an adequate selection of fragility functions developed in other regions, and a logic tree of fragility functions is proposed to be used in pipelines of LMA according to the data of pipeline damage after the 2007 Pisco Earthquake. Finally, the pipeline repair ratios and the total number of repairs are estimated for the earthquake scenario, and the results are geographically presented for each pipeline network.

We revised the building damage caused by the 2007 Pisco-Peru Earthquake using machine learning models and high-resolution satellite imagery. A framework for rapidly detecting collapsed buildings was proposed in the project “Development of Integrated Expert System for Estimation and Observation of Damage Level of Infrastructure in Lima Metropolitan Area” (JST-JICA SATREPS). The framework is based on a semantic segmentation model trained on freely available satellite and aerial imagery that does not include the target area. Thus, the generalization performance of the proposed framework was analyzed. Qualitative and quantitative analyses demonstrated that the proposed framework successfully predicted the distribution of collapsed buildings in Pisco. Moreover, it also reflects the ability to detect newly placed shelters. Our current trained model enables the rapid estimation of damaged buildings, crucial information for emergency response, and temporary refuges, which are also essential for fast rescue actions.

During big earthquakes, one of the challenges for the decision maker is the estimation of the resources for the attention of the disaster which is computed based on the casualties and injured people, which is generated by damaging earthquake. In this investigation, two criteria for the estimation of casualties during damaging earthquake were presented for Mw>6.5 in one target area, namely, Chorrillos district in the Lima metropolitan. First criterion considers the compilation of existing data that reports the casualties on damaged cities with a population density involved, considering the lifestyle, the time of occurrence, the season of the year, that could influence in the number of victims, which is normalized to avoid temporary effects in the estimation. The second criterion considers the output generated prior computed process such earthquake hazard, microzoning and risk analysis of the target area. Here a series of identification of parameters has been computed such as location of the source of earthquake, depth and epicentral distance, distribution of population, social levels, and others, to estimate the risk. For the computing of the number of casualties in the affected area, a relation between the magnitude and risk is developed. Both criteria provided results which with an uncertain measure, but not so far from each other. That gives us confidence in this approach. Also, we evaluate the estimation with the major earthquake’s scenarios for the region especially in Peru, with reasonable results.

Japanese citizens are still not fully prepared for an occurrence of the Nankai Trough Earthquake. In the Japanese population, it is not an easy task to achieve disaster preparedness, and to address issues such as a lack of initiative and low priority in disaster risk reduction (DRR). In their attempt to address these issues, the authors focused on Japanese elementary school students and their parents by conducting a lighthearted workshop that encouraged them to initiate risk reduction activities against disasters caused by natural hazards, including the Nankai Trough Earthquake. The workshop was a nonschool-based DRR activity, and it had the following characteristics: (1) the contents were comprehensively developed from a collaboration between researchers in science and engineering with a disaster science communicator and media personnel; (2) innovative contents were communicated in a creative manner; (3) incorporation of a “newspaper-making” activity; and (4) an online format that easily enabled those who did not have a close social network in the community to participate in it. The workshop was conducted with 21 families, and they developed original newspapers on DRR. The findings of the completed newspapers, participant observations, and questionnaire survey revealed that the workshop was an effective starting point for citizens to proactively engage in DRR, including the Nankai Trough Earthquake.

COVID-19, spreads very quickly and became a global pandemic in a short time, is not only life-threatening but also disrupts people’s lives, especially the elderly who are very vulnerable to being exposed to the coronavirus. The number of Indonesian elderly people is constantly increasing, reaching around 29 million in 2021. Almost half of them have socio-demographic vulnerability, high morbidity, and limited economic conditions. This paper discusses the importance of reducing the impact and risk that elderly people face in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic with a family and community approach. During the pandemic, the elderly people in the research location confront many challenges, such as accessing health facilities and services, providing basic daily needs, and engaging in social interaction, which are limited due to the government’s social restrictions. The health vulnerabilities and risks of the elderly are therefore getting higher, as indicated by the large number of them exposed to and dying due to COVID-19. The economic vulnerability and financial dependence of some elderly on their families also increase. In these difficult conditions, their families and residential communities provide enormous support and positively influence the knowledge, awareness, and behavior of the elderly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. This research relies heavily on primary data collection using qualitative methods through in-depth interviews with representatives of the elderly in the City of Bekasi, West Java. Data are also collected through a desk review of relevant books, articles, and documents.

Landslides are very dangerous phenomena dependent upon several parameters and criteria widespread in Northern Morocco. Their management is complex because of the dangers posed to the population and by the habitat, but also due to the difficulty of remedial actions. To address this, a methodology is needed based on the analysis of land movements through a multidisciplinary approach combining geology, hydrogeochemistry, and geotechnics. This perspective was adopted in this study of landslides in the city of Al Hoceima (Northern Morocco), and in particular on the slope located in front of the Al Hoceima port, which shows a morphology of old landslides, and more recent ones subject to factors of instability or landslides that activate after periods of intense rain. The analysis and interpretation of satellite images reveals a complex morphology, shaped by a geology characterized by tectonic activity and often-altered lithology. From a geotechnical point of view, the latter induces low to medium mechanical characteristics. Inclinometric measurements situate the average depths of the sliding planes at between 15 m and 25 m. The chemical facies of the groundwater is sodium sulphate, sometimes tilting toward chloride-sodium, proof of a leaching of the autochthonous formations (Trias-Lias and Jurassic), to which is added the action of the rising water table. All these factors intervene directly in the destabilization of the slope. These results allow us to establish concrete actions for the stabilization of the slope.

Practicing rescue plans is an important training method to improve the rescue capacity of firefighters, yet the status of such practice has rarely been reported in international journals. Vietnamese firefighters expanded the types of rescue plans to be practiced in 2012, but this activity remains limited and inadequate. This study aims to identify the causes of the current limitations in the practice of rescue plans and proposes solutions to improve the ability of Vietnamese firefighters to practice rescue plans. To identify the characteristics of rescue practice activities in Vietnam, 200 rescue plans and 100 rescue practice videos were analyzed. A survey of 196 officers from 16 provincial fire departments was conducted to identify reasons for these limitations. Officers’ responses from eight provincial fire departments with good performance in 2020 were compared with those of officers from other fire departments. The responses were also compared across the four groups of officials with different work experiences. The method of practicing rescue plans in Vietnam was compared with that proposed by the US Department of Homeland Security. This study suggests that Vietnam should apply less expensive exercises and not depend too much on hypothetical incident scenes. The same recommendation applies to other Southeast Asian countries.