September 5 Earthquake in China

I’m just back from vacation and wanted to briefly touch on the recent M6.6 earthquake that struck on September 5 in China. The temblor occurred to the southwest of Chengdu and caused over 60 fatalities and significant damage.

A view of the Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) in terms of g available from Kinetic Analysis Corporation is provided below.

Peak ground acceleration

Kinetic Analysis computes loss estimates using Kinetic Analysis Corporation’s global exposure data with a 15 arcsecond resolution and a variety of ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs). Below we show the loss distributions for the earthquake event based on 34 estimates derived using two sets of exposure data and 17 different types of GMPEs.

Loss distribution in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) in US$. Top and bottom of box are the 25th and 75th centiles of loss, the heavier line in the middle is the median, the filled gray circle the mean, the whiskers extend to the 5th and 95th centiles and the black dots are the extremes.

Ground motion and impact data for earthquakes occurring globally are available soon after an event. The ground motion data can be provided in terms of PGA, Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI), or spectral accelerations.

For more information, please contact us.