GEOG140 - Week 1 Essay : All buildings should be earthquake proof.

Earthquake-proof buildings are intended to maintain their structures during an earthquake

as to not add to the damage generated during such a natural disaster. Such proactive structures
could physically and mentally protect a community. In Romanian schools, it was found that
preparedness alone allowed students to be more confident in protecting themselves during an
emergency (Dobre, 2015). If all buildings were earthquake-proof, the damage would be more
controlled and the event would be much less of a tragedy mentally as well as physically.

As described in the earthquakes lecture’s diagram of tectonic plates and fault lines, some
locations are at more of a risk of suffering from an earthquake than others (Hyounes, 2019). This
provided argument the buildings relatively far away from threatening fault lines, may not need
earthquake-proof buildings.

Due to the USA’s democratic ways, I would have to suggest that the people who would
be impacted by these buildings in an earthquake should be the people who vote to decide who
pays and what is required in regards to the earthquake preparedness of their infrastructure. If they
believe this is the most pressing issue in their area, they would need to vote for it. In a perfect
world, everyone would be prepared for everything, but in the real world, we must prioritize
where we concentrate our focus due to limited resources.

As reflected in a 2011 attempt to model the hazard levels of buildings in earthquake-

prone areas, there is no straightforward way to rank which buildings (Sen, 2011). Similarly, the
Romainian school study I previously mentioned, also concluded that there must be a balance
found between reactivity and proactivity.

Overall, communities must decide for themselves where earthquake prepared buildings
fall on the priority list. Each community may have a different approach to this decision due to
their unique circumstances, such as location, financials, amount of risk, etc..

Works Cited

Dobre, D., Georgescu, E.-S., Dragomir, C.-S., Ionescu, C., & Tataru, D. (2015). Proactive Vs.
Reactive Learning on Buildings Response and Earthquake Risks, in Schools of Romania.
Constructii, 16(1), 40–48. Retrieved from
http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=asn&AN=116502706&site=ehost-live

Hyounes. (2019). Earthquakes Lecture.

Şen, Z. (2011). Supervised fuzzy logic modeling for building earthquake hazard assessment.
Expert Systems with Applications, 38(12), 14564–14573.
https://doi-org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/10.1016/j.eswa.2011.05.026