Research on disaster resilience of earthquake-stricken areas in Longmenshan fault zone based on GIS

ABSTRACT

Since the Ms 8.0 earthquake occurred in Yingxiu, a town in Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province, on May 12, 2008, frequent geological disasters ensued on the land affected by earthquakes in the Longmenshan fault zone have caused a large number of casualties and property losses. Therefore, measuring the disaster resilience of earthquake-stricken areas is the priority for disaster prevention and mitigation science. Based on the in-depth analysis of the hazard of disaster resilience, this paper constructs the compatibility coefficient of industrial and employment structure and per capita GDP growth rate from the socio-economic perspective to measure the disaster resilience. Considering seismic intensity, this paper, with the help of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and the topographic complexity index described by the topographic information entropy method, analyses the temporal and spatial change rule of disaster resilience in the heavily damaged area. The results show that the impact of the “post-earthquake effect” on disaster resilience tends to decrease concussively over time, and the seismic intensity and topographic complexity are important internal factors that restrict the improvement in disaster resilience. This paper will provide a broader application scenario for the concept of resilience, especially in post-earthquake integrated risk management and reconstruction process.

KEYWORDS:

• Longmenshan fault zone
• earthquake-stricken areas
• GIS
• seismic intensity
• topographic complexity
• disaster resilience
• post-earthquake effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of China: [Grant Number 2018YFC0604105]; Sichuan Science and Technology Program: [Grant Number 2019JDKY0017]; Opening Fund of Geomathematics Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province: [Grant Number scsxdz201601]; Scientific Research Fund of Sichuan Province Education Department: [Grant Number 18ZB0062].