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The Societal Cost of Fault Uncertainties in the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola

Description: 

The Caribbean Island of Hispaniola is comprised of two side-by-side countries: Haiti to the west and the Dominican Republic (DR) to the east. With the Island’s 20M+ inhabitants, high population cities, such as Port-au-Prince in Haiti and Santo Domingo in the DR, are centers of substantial risk exposure tied to a multitude of natural hazards, including hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods. Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters is generally much higher than that of the DR, which has a greater Gross Domestic Product, economic growth rate, and readiness for disaster. The Island hosts many seismically active faults that pose significant seismic risk to both countries. Two recent highly damaging earthquakes in Haiti are the Mw 7.0 January 2010 earthquake, which killed over 200,000 people and resulted in $8B worth of damage, and the August 2021 Mw 7.2 earthquake, which killed more than 2,000 people and caused over $1.5B in losses. The Septentrional and the Enriquillo-Plantain-Garden (EPG) left lateral strike-slip fault zones faults have high slip rates, are spatially extensive, and seismically active. It is estimated that the Septentrional fault can cause a Mw 7.5 or larger earthquake, and the EPG fault can cause a Mw 7.2 earthquake. An accurate estimate of risk metrics, such as average annual loss (AAL) or the probability of a loss exceeding some threshold, affects a country’s earthquake preparedness and its speed of recovery, through mitigation, (re)insurance, and catastrophe bond issuance and buy-in. Understanding individual contributions of major faults to these metrics can help governments differentiate risk in particular locations so they can set priorities. In this work, we explore the risk sensitivity to variations in fault segmentation, preferred slip rates, rupture behavior (single vs. multi-segment), and maximum magnitude on both the Septentrional and the EPG fault systems.

Session: Active Faults in the Caribbean and Central America

Type: Oral

Date: 4/20/2023

Presentation Time: 10:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Noha S. Farghal

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors