Funders: NERC-ESRC-AHRC
Earthquakes have resulted in over three-quarters of a million deaths already in this century, and economic losses of more than a quarter of a trillion US dollars since 1980 making them by far the most destructive of the natural hazards. In the absence of an accurate understanding of regions of particularly high earthquake risk, investment in protection against this poorly-constrained, highimpact, low-probability threat, remains a low priority across much of the developing world and death tolls resulting from earthquakes continue to grow. Until proven resilient construction becomes more universally available, high-impact earthquake research must focus on evidence-based, targeted, socially tuned, resilience building; identifying and working in those regions of space and time which will save the maximum number of lives per dollar invested.