The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System provides near real-time alerts about natural disasters around the world and tools to facilitate response coordination, including media monitoring, map catalogues and Virtual On-Site Operations Coordination Centre.

On 11/2/2008 1:48:44 PM UTC an earthquake of magnitude 6.1 has struck the unpopulated region of United States in United States.

Humanitarian Impact
Population vulnerability
Tsunami probability
Landslide probability
Nuclear radiation probability

Whether international humanitarian aid is needed must be decided by an expert. However, the following automatically calculated elements can help. This earthquake has potentially a low humanitarian impact and the affected region has low vulnerability to natural disasters.

Explanation of alert calculation:
The impact model combines magnitude (M), population within 100km (P) and vulnerability ECHO average score (V) using the formula:
alertscore = max(M-4.5,0) * log10(max(P / 80000,0))^ 0.5 * max(V,0.5) ^ 1.5 / 3
The weighted product of magnitude, population and vulnerability (0.5) results in an alertscore of 0
Then alert is Red if alertscore>2, Orange if alertscore>1 and Green if alertscore<=1.

About the data

Source: European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC)

Magnitude: definition

Potentially affected People

The population in the area of this earthquake if 0 people/km².

The earthquake occurred at 2h local time. At this time a day, more people are at home and therefore more vulnerable to collapsing residential buildings. During traffic hours, people can be affected by collapsing bridges and other road infrastructure.

About the data

Population data: derived from the LandScan 2002 dataset provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which disaggregated census data into pixels of ~1km² (or 30 arc seconds).

Damage

In general, earthquakes of magnitude 6 to 7  can be destructive in areas up to about 100 kilometers across where people live.

For more information on the intensity of the earthquake around the epicentre, please refer to the USGS ShakeMap product (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/shakemap/global/shake/index.html)

About the data

Land use data from GLC2000. This data is specific to this earthquake.

This damage assessment is based on the average damage of earthquakes over a 100 year period as compiled by USGS. The information is not specific to this earthquake.

Resilience and Vulnerability

Resilience is the capacity of the population to cope with a hazard. Since much of investments in earthquake preparedness and available funds for quick response is related to household income, the GDP per capita can be used as a rough indicator of resilience.

United States has a GDP per capita of 30845 PPP$ (Parity Purchasing Power Dollar, about 1 Euro) and is therefore part of the high level income countries. Therefore, the earthquake happened in an area of high resilience.

Based on the combination of 9 indicators, ECHO attributes United States a low vulnerability.

About the data

Exposure

Both conditions for survival and conditions for delivering aid strongly depend on the current weather and temperature. The following graphs show the current and forecast weather.
Current weather conditions and forecasts at earthquake location (lat: 51.6 - long: -174.32)

More detailed observations at closest weather station (Atka): WeatherByWeb - NOAA

About the data

Source: www.calle.com/world. The data is not very reliable, but it gives an indication for remote regions where more detailed information is not available. The data is interpolated for the given latitude and longitude from the closest airport weather stations.

Secondary effects

Probability of secondary effects:

• Landslides: The maximum slope in the area of the earthquake is 45.029% and the maximum altitude is 1430 m. Since this is a medium slope, the risk of earthquake induced landslides is medium. Note, however, that the slope data is not reliable on a local scale, while landslides depend very much on local topography, soil and meteorological conditions.
• Tsunami: the JRC tsunami wave propagation models indicated a unknown likelihood for a destructive tsunami. However, this probability must be confirmed by oceanographic measurements or observations.
   

Critical infrastructure

The following critical infrastructure is nearby and could be affected by the earthquake:

• Nuclear power plants: There are no nuclear facilities nearby the epicenter.
• Hydrodams: There are no hydrodam facilities nearby the epicenter.

About the data

Landslides: slope and altitude are derived from the gtopo30 dataset provided by USGS. The thresholds used for landslide related slope classes are: 0-30% - low risk (green), 30-60% medium risk (orange), 60-100% high risk (red).

Nuclear radiation: the distance to nuclear installations is evaluated based on a 1999 UN dataset containing the location of nuclear plants in the world. If plants are near and the earthquake magnitude is above 6.5, the alert is set to orange. Note that the location of plants is approximate with errors of up to 100km.

Tsunami: The JRC Tsunami model (http://tsunami.jrc.it/model) includes a full wave propagation calculation and estimates the wave height in all major cities affected by a tsunami.

Description

The earthquake happened in United States. The nearest populated places are [None].

It is a mountainous region with a maximum altitude of 1430 m.

About the data

Maps and description of location are based on Global Discovery data, provided by Europa Technology. The dataset is based on VMAP0 and is at scale 1:1.000.000.

Getting there and away

The nearest civilian airport (Atka) is at 69km from the epicenter. Other airports are: Adak Naf (163km), Atka (69km)

Ports nearby are: Adak (162km), Palisades Point (71km)

The estimated geographical coordinates of the earthquake are: 51.6 North and 174.32 West.

Dynamic Maps

Mapping material available on the DMA for United States:

• Interactive Country map: http://dmaweb2.jrc.it/services/dmaexplorer/?Country=United States
• Interactive Event map: click on maps below

image area: approx. 130x90km2 image area: approx. 65x45km2

Legend of symbols in this page:

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