Casualty in Earthquake and Tsunami Disasters: Internet-Based Monitoring and Early Estimation of the Final Death Toll

Abstract eng:
We investigated the time-dependent number of deaths reported through internet after earthquakes and/or tsunamis based on our previous model and the new results of earthquake cases. A model N(t) = N0 [1 – exp(–αt)] is used to describe such a temporal variation, in which N(t) is the number of deaths reported at time t, N0 is the final number of deaths, and α is the coefficient reflecting the rescue process. We considered 19 earthquake cases since 1999 using the information from http://www.sina.com.cn, which shows that the model fits the data well, and the logarithm of α is reversely proportional to the surface wave magnitude of earthquakes. Early estimation of the range of the final death toll can be made using the empirical magnitude-dependent coefficient α.

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