Disaster Risk Reduction Study

/California-Earthquake-Risk/Personal-Preparedness/Seven-Steps-to-Earthquake-Safety

GEOL 112. This assessment requires you to adapt the Seven Steps to Earthquake Safety. recommendations made by the California Earthquake Authority to your life.

The essay should be about 1200 words long, and follow this structure:

Abstract/summary: about 150 words. This is NOT an introduction, but a short-version of your ENTIRE essay.

Introduction: about 300-400 words. This should provide a context about the seismic hazards, exposures, and vulnerabilities of the Bay Area and your own life. Include things like the hazards: tectonic setting, fault readiness; exposure: buildings, infrastructure, things falling, expected displaced persons, dollar cost of damage, shelter needs, etc; vulnerability: socioeconomic and cultural/personal characteristics that can affect propensity to experience harm.

Discussion/7 steps: about 500-600 words. This should be a step-by-step overview of how you yourself prepare for, survive, and recover from a future earthquake. This requires you to carefully study the Seven Steps to Earthquake Safety.  1) explaining the need for each step, 2) what you yourself have done or will do to address each of those steps, and importantly 3) what your family, roommates, or neighbors have done or will do to address these steps. These 3 steps will require you to do things like, call your City planning department, talk to the people you live with or near, do an inspection of your own home looking for potential hazards, and organizing supplies and documents/valuables.

Conclusion: about 150 words. Given your overview of hazards, your exposure, and your steps to reduce your vulnerability, provide an assessment of your risk of loss from the next major earthquake. Please be careful to draw this conclusion based on what evidence you have presented. This section should 1) summarize your introduction and discussion, 2) provide a statement on your risk of harm from a major earthquake, and 3) give recommendations for earthquake preparedness in the Bay Area based on what your study has uncovered.

Reference list: List of literature used. ALL sources used MUST be acknowledged in the text, as in for instance (Abbott 2017), and a list of all references mentioned at the end of the paper. This is not counted in the word limit. Any and all sources must be included (web pages, blogs, newspaper articles, lecture contents, readings). If you are using someone else’s words, you must include “quotation marks” and the page number it was taken from. You are required to cite at least two peer-reviewed articles, in addition to any course readings, news media, and blogs.