Development of Preliminary Evaluation Methodology for Fire-Following Earthquake Risk Assessment

Fire-following earthquakes (FFEs) represent critical secondary damage phenomena following large-scale seismic events. Existing methodologies for FFE risk assessment often involve complex procedures and specialized processes, which limit their accessibility to non-experts. Consequently, a growing need for a practical and simplified methodology that enables rapid and user-friendly assessment of FFE risks is evident. This study addresses this challenge by proposing a streamlined FFE risk assessment methodology that eliminates the need for cluster formation and geographic information system (GIS) data by treating administrative districts as single clusters. Furthermore, this study introduces two modification factors, namely nx and ny, derived from the existing static evaluation framework, to enhance the reliability of the methodology and mitigate possible underestimation scenarios. This methodology was applied to several regions to demonstrate its capability to provide swift and reliable evaluation outcomes, and thereby validate its practical applicability to seismic disaster management.