[CEUS-earthquake-hazards] Wang comment on Krinitszky and Jacob

[Jay Crandell]

Jacob,

I think you've finally hit on the "root" of the problem in dealing with
uncertainty in risk:  

(quote) "Otherwise those that conform with the standard are unfairly
burdened to bail out (via tax-payer paid FEMA disaster assistance) the
states and communities that don't conform to the same standards."

Thus, Memphis, or Tennessee, or any other state or local political
jurisdiction would be fine to choose a level of hazard (within the confines
of plausible scenarios or constructs) and they would be able to live with it
just fine (realizing that there is a broad spectrum of acceptable trade-offs
in risk and benefits that are truly sustainable).  The problem comes when we
try to "cross subsidize" risk management through either federal programs
and/or risk-inconsistent insurance practices.  Both of these
policies/practice has led us down the path of "you can never be too safe"
with my money.(particularly if in an uncertain future event someone in a
high risk area might be "spending" money of someone else in a lower risk
condition either through tax subsidy by disaster assistance or through lack
of categorization of insurance premiums by risk/vulnerability). 

On the life safety side of things, I am all for dealing with that with
"reasonable" codes and a greater focus on relief (as oppose to "bail out"
assistance) to provide emergency services and aid that can also help society
in the intervening years between major disasters (saving perhaps many more
lives than would be lost on average to earthquakes which have a maximum life
saved opportunity of about 9 to 25 lives per year on average based on
current risk estimates).  I have also found the principle of diminishing
returns applies to mitigation in that as you pass some optimal point, the
cost of doing more starts to increase rapidly while the benefits gained
decrease rapidly.

Having said that, it seems to me that the real root problem here is not the
uncertainty in hazard and allowing different "right answers" to co-exist so
much as it is our approach in policy that creates "cross subsidies" and thus
conflicting interests.

What are your thoughts?  Others?

Jay


ARES
5095 Sudley Rd
West River, MD 20778
410-867-9617
410-867-9618 fax

-----Original Message-----
From: ceus-earthquake-hazards-bounces at geohazards.usgs.gov
[mailto:ceus-earthquake-hazards-bounces at geohazards.usgs.gov] On Behalf Of
jacob at ldeo.columbia.edu
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 9:29 PM
To: ceus-earthquake-hazards at geohazards.usgs.gov
Subject: Re: [CEUS-earthquake-hazards] Wang comment on Krinitszky and Jacob


Dear Zhenming:

A good reference to your arguments would be:

http://www.uky.edu/KGS/geologichazards/Comment_Klugel.pdf

with which some of us discussants are familiar, but don't necessarily agree
on
all the points you make in it.

So - we could take either your preferences as "THE TRUTH", or Ellis'; or all
the
seismologists' and engineers', yours included, and look at them as a
distribution. That's what SSHAC does, although I know you don't like SSHAC
and
I have some "scientific" reservations about such procedures too. But the
SSHAC
and similar procedures are not there to come to a better "scientific truth".
They are socially engineered procedures to come to a result when diverging
opinions in the expert community exist, and when structures and the built
environment that society relies on and demands, need to be designed and
built to
a common standard.

Otherwise those that conform with the standard are unfairly burdened to bail
out
(via tax-payer paid FEMA disaster assistance) the states and communities
that
don't conform to the same standards.

I guess we just have to live with the fact that you like your "TRUTH" to be
the
better truth, if not the only truth. That is an individual scientist's
prerogative. But it does not help society to come to a consesus standard.

I would like to point out to you that, to the best of my memory, each state
or
community that adopts a seismic standard, that significantly deviates from
the
FEMA recommended NEHRP (in the form of IBC, adopted as a reference code by
local regulatory powers) will have to go through an approval process that
makes
this community's code FEMA-certified. If it does not meet this federal
approval
process, the state or community may fail to become eligible to federal
earthquake disaster relief funds. So you should not take lightly your
insistance on lower standards (even if you were scientifically "right") that
make your state (and similar like-minded communities) uneligible for federal
relief funds after an earthquake. Part of the argument is that the federal
funds used for rebuilding should conform to the federal standards, or you
are
not entitled to the federal money. We had to go through this process for the
first version of the NYC Building code. But recently NYC switched to IBC, so
that almost automatically has federal approval, unless the local community
insists on "substantial" exemptions and modifications from IBC reference
code.

Best
Klaus





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