Casualties distribution in human and natural hazards

• Type: Chapter or Part of a Book
• Date: 2014

Authors

António Mendes Lopes (Author) FEUP; Carla M. A. Pinto (Author) Other; J. A. Tenreiro Machado (Author) Other

Book

Title: Mathematical Methods in Engineering

Pages: 173-180

ISBN: 9789400771833; 9789400771826

Indexing

Scopus - 0 Citations

Scientific classification

CORDIS: Technological sciences

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00K-5CJ

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-7183-3_16

Abstract (EN): Catastrophic events, such as wars and terrorist attacks, big tornadoes and hurricanes, huge earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and landslides, are always accompanied by a large number of casualties. The size distribution of these casualties have separately been shown to follow approximate power law (PL) distributions. In this paper, we analyze the number of victims of catastrophic phenomena, in particular, terrorism, and find double PL behavior. This means that the data set is better approximated by two PLs instead ofone. We have plotted the two PL parameters corresponding to all terrorist events occurred in every year, from 1980 to 2010. We observe an interesting pattern in the chart, where the lines, that connect each pair of points defining the double PLs, are roughly aligned to each other. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific