Reuters: 'Is 2010 worse than usual for earthquakes?'

Speaking to AlertNet, Femke Vos, a researcher on natural disaster impacts at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), said that more studies should be conducted on why earthquakes lead to so many deaths compared with other hazards, including the role of different construction materials and the time of day the quake strikes.

"The outcomes of this [work] can be used for disaster preparedness and planning," she said. "There is still a lot that needs to be done."

"When we look at cities in earthquake-prone countries, the population is increasing, and with urbanisation, there are more people at risk when an earthquake strikes, so the impact is bigger today than it was at the beginning of the century," says Femke Vos of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

Reuters also cites statistics from a recently released US Geological Survey (USGS) press release indicating the the trend in earthquake frequency is well within normal.