The Socio-Economic Impact of Historic Australian Earthquakes

Abstract

By using the CATDAT Damaging Earthquakes database, the socio-economic damage data collected for historic Australian earthquakes and rockbursts are presented. Although the total Australian statistics, just under $6 billion AUD (2010 HNDECI adjusted dollars) and 16 earthquake deaths and 5 rockburst deaths, are dominated by the 1989 Newcastle Earthquake, many other historic earthquakes have recorded significant losses to regional finance and infrastructure and a repeat earthquake could cause significant damage with the now increased exposure. The effects of over 90 damaging earthquakes have been recorded in Australia since the beginning of its European history. Given the small return period of European Australian history, there exists a large gap in the historical damaging earthquake record compared to some other parts of the world. Comparatively, on a global scale, Australia has had very few social losses as a result of earthquakes. Only 6 fatal earthquakes and rock-bursts have been recorded on Australian soil; however, 10 more have caused casualties. This complete list of Australian damaging earthquake socio-economic losses in CATDAT, sourced from many locations, includes estimates, trends and figures of these earthquakes based on historical Australian building type, economy and social data. Details as to damaging earthquake secondary effects are also presented. This data should help to standardise the differences seen in literature in values of historic Australian damaging earthquakes and will also aid earthquake loss estimation damage-loss conversion ratios.

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