Improved Seismic Monitoring?Improved Decision-Making, describes and assesses the varied economic benefits potentially derived from modernizing and expanding seismic monitoring activities in the United States. These benefits include more effective loss avoidance regulations and strategies, improved understanding of earthquake processes, better engineering design, more effective hazard mitigation strategies, and improved emergency response and recovery. The economic principles that must be applied to determine potential benefits are reviewed and the report concludes that although there is insufficient information available at present to fully quantify all the potential benefits, the annual dollar costs for improved seismic monitoring are in the tens of millions and the potential annual dollar benefits are in the hundreds of millions.


Table of Contents


Front Matter
Executive Summary
1 Introduction
2 The Role of Seismic Monitoring in Decision-Making
3 Conceptual Framework for Benefit Estimation and a Taxonomy of
Benefits
4 Benefits from Improved Earthquake Hazard Assessment and
Forecasting
5 Benefits from Improved Loss Estimation Models
6 Benefits from Performance-Based Engineering
7 Benefits for Emergency Response and Recovery
8 Integrating the Benefits--Conclusions and Recommendations
References
Appendix A: Excerpts from Bernknopf et al. (1993), "Societal Value
of Geologic Maps"
Appendix B: Committee and Staff Biographies
Appendix C: Acronyms and Abbreviations