Novel Approach to Analyse Structures to Predict Earthquake Impact in Urban Areas

Abstract

In recent decades, earthquake disaster risks in cities have increased due to a high rate of urbanisation, faulty land-use planning and construction, inadequate infrastructure services, and environmental degradation. Thus, for urban centres under possible exposure to earthquakes, it is imperative that certain preparedness and emergency procedures be contrived in the event of and prior to an earthquake, which in turn requires quantification of the effects of the earthquake on the environment. The main element of such quantification is the building losses, which is correlated to casualties, planning of emergency response, first aid and emergency shelter needs. Recent earthquakes show how significant urban earthquake disaster prevention planning is. This is where my project comes in and it aims to assist in city planning and reduce the risk of an unprecedented disaster. My project is to predict and calculate the earthquake impact in Urban areas by analysing the building structures in the particular area. In our algorithm, we have taken images of buildings from google maps as inputs. Just from that, our software is able to calculate dimensions of the building like volume, height, and safe area, which is the area of damage caused by the debris of the building.We used very efficient methods of image processing and Machine Learning models, to go further, and even predict the effect of seismic waves with different intensities on the particular inputs. This can indicate the appropriate distance between several buildings in order to decrease the risk. We mapped the safe area in a city as gradients to indicate the peril during such a calamity.Our unparalleled model was able to achieve high levels of accuracy even with 20 trials due to the mathematical models. This software and algorithm could, in the future, also be implemented to other structures with various shapes, like bridges and stadiums, which will essentially help us collect data from all around the world and help with infrastructure development.