Earthquake Analysis

Hakeem Ceesay, Reid VonDielingen, and Riley Mulshine (University of Notre Dame)

Earthquakes pose serious risks to infrastructure, economic viability, and human lives across the world. In significant occurrences, buildings could be knocked over, homes could be destroyed, families may end up displaced with their valuables ruined, and hundreds to thousands of lives could be lost. As a result of the unpredictable nature of earthquakes, foretelling their impacts have proven to be difficult, especially pertaining to the death toll in each case. In an attempt to pinpoint which qualities in earthquakes lead to the largest number of lives lost, the questions that will be addressed are:

1. How do magnitude, intensity, focal depth, and houses destroyed impact the number of deaths due to earthquakes?
2. Does geography play a role in the number of deaths due to earthquakes?
3. How have the number of deaths due to earthquakes changed over time (everything being equal, did more or less people die from similar earthquakes in the past compared to the present)?