Project Overview and Goals

One of the first steps in creating a disaster resistant community is to understand the potential impact a disaster will have on your community. Being able to predict where losses will occur and to what extent they will impact our community is vital to mitigation and planning efforts. Although earthquakes are not common in Fort Collins, our seismic history reveals that the potential for a severe earthquake is real, so it is important that we plan for that possibility. Earthquake planning can be difficult because every city is affected differently due to varying structural configurations, geology, population, and regional economy. This creates a need for some method to tailor risk analysis to the individual community.

HAZUS is a tool now available to the Office of Emergency Management that will help us and other decision-makers estimate where mitigation efforts are needed in Fort Collins. HAZUS is primarily designed to provide local hazard analysis and risk assessment for earthquakes before they happen. HAZUS can be an important decision support tool during the response period as well by helping emergency managers identify the likely damaged areas, and providing a rapid estimate of the damage and casualties that have occurred, as well as the type and amount of resources that should be deployed to assist the affected area. HAZUS can also be valuable during the recovery phase of a disaster by estimating such things as the projected pattern of power and water outages, to help organize and set priorities for recovery.

Planning is underway which will expand the capabilities of this program to include other hazards, such as floods.

Design Specifications

HAZUS is a software program that uses mathematical formulas and information about buildings, local geology, the location and size of potential earthquakes, economic data, and other information to estimate potential losses earthquakes. HAZUS uses a geographic information system to map and display ground shaking, the pattern of building damage, and demographic information about the community.

Once we identify the location and size of a hypothetical earthquake, HAZUS will estimate the violence of ground shaking, the number of buildings damaged, the number of casualties, the amount of damage to transportation systems, disruption to the electrical and water utilities, the number of people displaced from their homes, and the estimated cost of repairing projected damage and other effects.

Partnerships

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
National Institute of Building Sciences

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