Evaluation of risks and vulnerabilities under multi-hazard threats in a protected area of Bucharest, Romania

Abstract

As it is well known, Romania and its capital, Bucharest, suffered building collapses, heavy damage and casualties in the 1940 and 1977 Vrancea earthquakes. The paper presents methods for the assessment of urban multi-hazard risks for emergency planning, using affordable tools. The scenarios for night and day time impact in the pilot study protected area have shown that: - Earthquake damage and casualties can be significant; for the seismic intensity I = VIII, a number of 63 buildings would suffer considerable damage, while for I = VIII½, the damage would affect 165 buildings, mostly low-rise structures. The number of heavy injured persons would be 29 and 64, while live loss will be 59 and 92, respectively, for the considered intensities. The damage would affect safety of living for about 1,809 to 3,061 people. - The scenario of climatic and hydrologic hazards is dominated by an extreme event of accidental flooding, in which the water cover could be as high as 2.5 m; - The terrorist blasting scenario has shown that, as the explosive quantity increases, the impacts would have great potential of damage, injured people and casualties.

Keywords

• multi-hazard scenarios
• Romania
• Bucharest
• earthquake vulnerability
• terrorist blasting
• casualties
• impacts mapping