Chapter 23
Disaster Risk Reduction Strategies
in Earthquake-Prone Cities
Lori Peek, Stacia S. Ryder, Justin Moresco, and Brian Tucker
Abstract This chapter provides an overview of disaster risk reduction (DRR)
activities underway in 11 earthquake-prone cities including Antakya and Istanbul,
Turkey; Bandung and Padang, Indonesia; Chincha and Lima, Peru; Christchurch,
New Zealand; Delhi and Guwahati, India; San Francisco, USA; and Thimphu,
Bhutan. The goal is to provide information about the tools and resources that
practitioners and organizations in these 11 cities have access to, in order to provide
a more comprehensive understanding of DRR strategies and a better sense of
the contexts in which future potential products may be created, evaluated, and
ultimately adopted. Drawing on both survey and in-depth interview data with
earthquake safety practitioners from government, business, health care, education,
and grassroots groups, the chapter describes earthquake and disaster risk reduction
programs and initiatives in these communities, explains what spurred the creation
of those programs and initiatives, details the technical tools and resources that
practitioners in these cities currently use to assess and mitigate their risk, and
analyzes the communication channels that disaster and risk professionals now have
access to and find most useful in their work. The chapter concludes with a discussion
of overarching motivations for adopting new disaster and seismic risk reduction
(SRR) practices and offers practical advice to help guide the development of risk
reduction tools for use in earthquake-prone cities around the world.
L. Peek () • S.S. Ryder
Department of Sociology, Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis, Colorado State University,
Fort Collins, CO, USA
e-mail: Lori.Peek@colostate.edu; Stacia.Sydoriak@colostate.edu; stacia.s.ryder@gmail.com
J. Moresco
Model Product Management, Global Earthquake Models, Risk Management Solutions, Newark,
CA, USA
e-mail: Justin.Moresco@rms.com
B. Tucker
GeoHazards International, Menlo Park, CA, USA
e-mail: Tucker@GeoHaz.org
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
P. Gardoni, J.M. LaFave (eds.), Multi-hazard Approaches to Civil
Infrastructure Engineering, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29713-2_23
507