Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
Learning From Earthquakes

Damage Assessment of Muisne – 22 April 2016

January 29, 2018

Virtual Earthquake Reconnaissance Team (VERT) Summary by Sahar Derakhshan, Ezra Jampole, Kristen Hess

Sahar Derakhshan, Kristen Hess, and Ezra Jampole will be co-curating the housing topic of EERI’s Clearinghouse on the Muisne, Ecuador earthquake. Sahar is an Assistant Specialist at PEER with backgrounds in Public Policy and Structural engineering; Kristen is a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder studying sustainable infrastructure materials;  Ezra is a PhD student at Stanford University studying methods to reduce damage to light frame housing during earthquakes.

The following map illustrates satellite-detected, potential damaged structures in Muisne, Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador (Figure 1). The analyzed area is located approximately 30 km north of the 16 April 2016 Muisne earthquake mainshock epicenter. This analysis is carried out using Pléiades satellite image acquired 20 April 2016 and a WorldView-3 image acquired 12 March 2016. UNITAR-UNOSAT identified 450 potentially damaged structures of which 139 are destroyed, 206 severely damaged, and 105 moderately damaged. This is a preliminary analysis and not yet been validated in the field (Source).

 

UNOSAT_A3_20160417EQ_Muisne_DamageAssessment_Landscape

Figure 1.