Pan-participatory Assessment and Governance of Earthquake Risks in the Ordos Area (PAGER-O)

The Ordos region has a population of about 80 million, of whom approximately half live within large cities, which have grown rapidly and recently around the nuclei of much smaller cities that are known to have been destroyed by earthquakes in the historical past. The remainder of the population is rural, and live in highly vulnerable buildings. The region has suffered three of the most deadly earthquakes in recorded history; the 1556 Huaxian earthquake was responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 people, and other historical earthquakes are known to have killed over 100,000 people. This project aims to make a significant improvement in the assessment of seismic hazard in the region, and is particularly timely because the study area covers the most populous part of the Chinese end of the Silk Road Economic Belt, a planned investment of hundreds of billions of dollars that will transform communications, transport and trade across Eurasia.

This population is particularly vulnerable because there are two fundamental gaps in earthquake-risk reduction in Mainland China First, there is a gap between scientific understanding of the risks and hazards, and the knowledge that communities need in order to design effective practices of governance. The second gap is between the top-down and bottom-up approaches to the governance of disaster risk reduction (DRR).

This project brings together teams from the China Earthquake Administration (CEA), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to carry out research and practical action to bridge these gaps. Our work will be rooted in the two-thousand-year historical record of earthquakes in the region, which allows us to investigate a suite of methods for bridging these gaps. In this work, we shall collaborate closely with researchers, policymakers and operational agencies at local, provincial, national and international level, and shall work with them to integrate local (bottom-up) and national (top-down) approaches to earthquake DRR.

We shall use tools of modern tectonic geology to estimate probable sizes of the historical earthquakes of the region. Then we shall calculate ground shaking if such an earthquake were to recur. We shall make loss estimates using both the CEA's database of vulnerability and that of the US Geological Survey's PAGER (Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response) project. These estimates will form the basis of engagement between the scientist and policy makers at the county scale and upwards, where legislation and practice are top-down.

At the same time, working in partnership with local communities, village, town, and county officials, and staff of local NGOs, we shall explore the social roots of earthquake disaster risk by focussed studies on small sites within the region. We shall partner with Geohazards International (GHI) to produce a detailed scenario based on a historical earthquake. Such scenarios have been shown to stimulate communities to generate their own mitigation strategies for earthquake risk, and we shall use this technique as the basis for developing, testing, and evaluating participatory approaches to assessing earthquake vulnerability and risk from the bottom up in China. Finally, with the provincial and national partners we shall explore routes to link these with top-down laws regulations and procedures to establish improved, long-term, earthquake disaster risk reduction.

This research will be of direct and immediate impact to the ministries in China with responsibility for Earthquake hazard and risk: the China Earthquake Administration (CEA) and the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA).

The research outputs will be used by both ministries to develop policy and produce guidelines for the reduction of seismic hazard, particularly in rural and peri-urban areas.

The inhabitants of these areas will also benefit, both from the eventual improvement of the top-down management of earthquake disaster risk reduction but also - more immediately - from engagement in practical approaches to the assessment and mitigation of the hazards that directly affect their communities.

This research will also add to the UK's base of expertise in earthquake hazards in Eurasia. One never knows where the next devastating earthquake will strike, but each such event prompts international response, and the UK has to consider the appropriate actions to take (whether they be of relief, or merely to assure the safety of its citizens). Indeed, Investigators of this proposal gave advice the the SAGE committee in respect of the recent Nepalese earthquake.

The transdisciplinary nature of the research proposed here is relatively new, and the young Chinese researchers involved in this project will benefit form the experience of working in an environment that crosses the boundaries between disciplines in a way that is unfamiliar to them.

We expect that the outcomes of this work will be of interest to the reinsurance and construction industries.