Developing a rapid earthquake impact assessment procedure at European scale

This study introduces a comprehensive rapid earthquake impact assessment procedure at the European scale, designed to provide timely damage and loss estimates following seismic events and to create a harmonized framework that addresses the fragmentation of current national rapid response systems across Europe. The approach combines two key components: (i) ShakeMapEU for fast macroseismic intensity estimation and (ii) the ESRM20 (European Seismic Risk Model) exposure model, for building vulnerability characterization. The authors format the latter into a spatially disaggregated exposure database for residential buildings at a high resolution of 30-arcseconds, using 44 macro-taxonomy groups based on structural system, height, and design level.

These building types are linked to EMS-98 (European Macroseismic Scale) vulnerability classes, enabling a macroseismic semi-empirical assessment of damage. Upon receiving a ShakeMap, the system estimates building damage and casualty distributions. Results are aggregated at the level of European Local Administrative Units for practical use by civil protection agencies. The researchers compare model outputs with data from 16 recent damaging earthquakes post-March 2020, showing good agreement with observed damage. Two case studies – a Mw 6.4 Croatia earthquake (2020) and a Mw 4.8 event in France (2023) – demonstrate the system's ability to deliver detailed, municipal-level impact assessments, supporting decision-making for disaster planning and response. A key challenge lies in aligning EMS-98 damage grades with post-event emergency tagging practices used in field surveys. Harmonizing these classification systems is essential to ensure compatibility with rapid assessment tools and to enable continuous model improvement through feedback from real-world data.