Journal of Natural Disaster Science

SURVIVAL MODELLING OF VICTIMS TRAPPED IN COLLAPSED BUILDINGS IN EARTHQUAKES

Shinobu SAKAI
Research Associate, Department of Architectural Engineering, Hokkaido University

(Received 30 September and in revised form 24 February 1992)

Abstract

A survival model is proposed for the analysis of the degrees of injury to victims trapped by building collapse during earthquakes. The assumption is made that the survivability of trapped people can be determined from two basic factors; the degree of injury incurred at the moment of building collapse and the extensiveness of micro-environmental deterioration. On the basis of a close examination of these two factors, Shiono and Krimgold's fade-away function model, which describes how a victim's health condition deteriorates with time, has been modified and a survival rate diagram developed to estimate the degrees of injury to trapped victims. Through case studies for four fatal earthquakes, the extent of the impact of a collapsing building on trapped victims is explained in terms of building type and the collapse mechanism. The injury distributions estimated for the case studies are compared in terms of the triage system, the conventional injury severity scale used in actual situations.

Key words

survivability of trapped victims, fade-away function, injury distribution, survival rate, triage