QLARM
Description
The QLARM (Quake Loss Assessment for Response and Mitigation) software calculates the approximate Intensity of ground motion (or acceleration), expected damage, number of fatalities and injured due to shaking by earthquakes within 26 minutes (median), accompanied by maps of the strongly affected settlements. In the future, lists of estimated shaking intensity at hospitals, schools and airports will be included.
QLARM fatality estimates have been calibrated for 19 countries, including 5 with recent earthquakes in the GOBEYOND area.
Professional publications on QLARM properties and results number 30, including 3 generated in the GOBEYOND project.
The time of manual calculations of losses by QLARM amounts currently to 18 minutes, following the estimates of source parameters, which become available after 8 minutes for GOBEYOND countries. By automatization of QLARM (in progress) the alert delay will be reduced from 26 to 10 minutes. If regional earthquake source estimates were allowed, the alert delay could be reduced to 4 minutes after earthquakes.
Technical Information
Main hazard addressed:
Earthquakes
Other related hazards:
-
IP Ownership:
International Centre for Earth Simulation (ICES)
Development Stage:
TRL 7: System prototype demonstration in operational environment (QLARM v4)
TRL 9: Actual system proven in operational environment (QLARM v3)
TRL 9: Actual system proven in operational environment (QLARM v3)
Alert message posted 117 minutes after the 30 October 2020 magnitude M=7 earthquake in Greece, for which 119 fatalities and 1043 injured were reported. The respective estimates are shown at the top right; thus, the alert was correct.
Simulation of a QLARM after the fact alert for the Irpinia M=6.9 earthquake of 23 November 1980 modelled as a line source defined by the aftershock distribution 32 minutes after the main shock.
The numbers of fatalities and injured reported were 2483 and 7700, respectively, thus the QLARM estimate is correct.
(In this simulation the population numbers were not adjusted back to 1980 as they were in the publication Wyss and Rosset, Geosciences 2020, 10, 165; doi:10.3390/geosciences10050165).
Products using this model
- QLARM Earthquake Loss Estimate AlertsView Product
References
Wyss, M. and P. Rosset Rapid Fatality Estimates after Earthquakes in Western Mediterranean Countries for First Response. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am., 2024. 114: p. 2791–2803 DOI: 10.1785/0120240078.
Wyss, M., M. Speiser, and S. Tolis, The Earthquake Fatality Load: A Measure of Impact. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 2024. 114(3): p. 1437–1443 DOI: doi.org/10.1785/0120230187
Wyss, M. and M. Nas, Fatal earthquakes in Türkiye and real-time casualty estimates after the 2011 M7.1 Van Earthquake. Natural Hazards, 2025. in press