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Due to climate change and an increasing concentration of the world’s population in vulnerable areas, how to manage catastrophe risk efficiently and cover disaster losses fairly is still a universal dilemma.

This paper applies a law and economic approach.

China’s mechanism for managing catastrophic disaster risk is in many ways unique. It emphasizes government responsibilities and works well in many respects, especially in disaster emergency relief. Nonetheless, China’s mechanism which has the vestige of a centrally planned economy needs reform.

I propose a catastrophe insurance market-enhancing framework which marries the merits of both the market and government to manage catastrophe risks. There are three pillars of the framework: (i) sustaining a strong and capable government; (ii) government enhancement of the market, neither supplanting nor retarding it; (iii) legalizing the relationship between government and market to prevent government from undermining well-functioning market operations. A catastrophe insurance market-enhancing framework may provide insights for developing catastrophe insurance in China and other transitional nations.

First, this paper analyzes China’s mechanism for managing catastrophic disaster risks and China’s approach which emphasizes government responsibilities will shed light on solving how to manage catastrophe risk efficiently and cover disaster losses fairly. Second, this paper starts a broader discussion about government stimulation of developing catastrophe insurance and this framework can stimulate attention to solve the universal dilemma.

There are few papers which deal with professional liability for buildings when architects and engineers (AEs) face disaster risks. The purpose of this paper is to find out the main legal risks for practitioners.

This paper uses t‐tests and ANOVA to investigate the impacts of earthquake on four areas: the number of architects or engineers who were sued; the time to appeal cases; the conviction rate in final judgments; and the number of public or private projects filed.

The results show that design professionals have a high burden of legal liability risks that were substantially increased by the Chichi earthquake. The following risks have significant impact: architects are burdened with higher civil liability than engineers; civil liability cases are more complicated; criminal cases have high conviction rates; and more liability cases are filed for private projects.

The following phenomena are worth further examination: the influenced of collectivism on AE defendants’ behaviour; and the legal tactics of plaintiffs in civil litigation, who may file parallel criminal liability cases to increase their compensation.

This paper contributes to the evidence of the kinds of liability which have high legal risks in practice, thus evaluating legal costs accurately in contractual negotiation.

It enriches AEs’ continuing education and engineering programs by strengthening the teaching materials on legal liability risks under earthquake attack.

The daily life of people is threatened by natural disasters. Crisis management is that in which attempts are made to before, during and after disasters. The most important factor for a manager to be able to overcome a crisis depends on his/her readiness before it. The main objective of this study was determining an earthquake information management system (EIMS) in Japan, Turkey and Iran and describing how it can reduce destruction by crisis management.

This study was an analytical comparison in which data were collected by questionnaire, observation and checklist. The subject was the EIMS in selected countries. Sources of information were staff in related organizations, scientific documentation and the internet. To analyze the findings, criteria rating technique, Delphi technique, and descriptive method were used.

Findings showed that the EIMSs in Japan, Turkey and Iran are decentralized. The EIMS is called “Phoenix” in Japan, and “natural disaster management information system” or “AFAYBIS” in Turkey. In Iran there was not a useful and efficient EIMS to evaluate earthquake information. According to outcomes, it is clear that an information system can only influence decisions if it is relevant, reliable and available for the decision‐makers in a timely fashion. Therefore, it is necessary to reform and design a model. The model contains responsible organizations and their functions.

This paper contains valuable information on EIMSs and their role in reducing destruction.

Looks at the earthquakes of 17 August and 12 November in Turkey and Greece respectively. Examines the differences in destructiveness and loss of life and the factors contributing to these. Concludes that it is important to learn from experience in these incidences so that lessons can be learned from the full cycle of disaster.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of freight containers to store relief items instead of operating a permanent warehouse building.

A mathematical model is developed to determine the location and quantity of containers as well as the type and amount of relief supplies to store in order to investigate the practicality of using freight containers for storage. The model is tested using earthquake risk data, estimates of population under risk, and the distances between cities. An experimental study is performed using Turkish Prime Ministry Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (abbreviated as AFAD in Turkish) data for total number of relief supplies.

Considering the earthquake risk of possible locations, the results of the study indicate the target locations for containers. The idea of using containers as storage facilities helped beneficiaries to be reached within a short distance and in an efficient way.

The presented model is not implemented in real life disaster relief operations even if it is tested with real earthquake risk, demand and distance data.

To apply this model in practice, the container locations within cities should be determined and managerial operations such as maintenance, environmental, and security planning have to be considered.

This study presents the first analysis of three sub-topics’ intersection: warehousing, pre-positioning in disaster relief, and containerization. To the best of authors’ knowledge, containers have not been considered for storage of relief items in humanitarian logistics before.

The present article serves two main goals. First, the proposed scheme for Greece is being involved in a benchmarking analysis. Second, an expansion of previous quantitative models is undertaken in order to estimate risk‐based premiums for the proposed national insurance scheme.

The benchmarking analysis of the proposed scheme is undertaken in comparison to the best practices of the catastrophe insurance systems operating in most member‐states of the EU. Risk modelling is employed to calculate risk‐based premiums.

The benchmarking analysis leads to conclusions which may be useful for the stage of actual implementation of such a program in Greece. Risk‐based premiums for the proposed national insurance scheme are estimated for all CRESTA zones of the country.

Uncertainty of estimated catastrophe losses is a limitation of the research.

The paper provides a detailed description of the proposed earthquake insurance scheme.

The Greek Government should evaluate the proposal for the establishment of a national insurance program for earthquake damages.

The paper's originality/value consists of the construction of a unique data bank of the residential stock of Greece, and a comprehensive proposal for earthquake insurance, based on the best practices of national Cat insurance schemes.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)¹ has become such an important and popular concept along with the rise of the importance of sustainable development (SD) in the world. Nowadays, CSR is focused on goals such as poverty reduction and SD. It has become clear to the business world that SD is no longer only the concern of governments and related non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and that they should also immediately start becoming concerned about the sustainability of resources and human development along with their financial sustainability. In this sense, establishment of multi-stakeholder dialogues and partnerships among all these actors has also become extremely important.

This Study aims to present the seismic hazard assessment of the earthquake-prone eastern of Iran that has become more important due to its growing economic importance. Many cities in this region have experienced life and financial losses due to major earthquakes in recent years. Thus, in this study the seismic hazard maps and curves, and site-specific spectrums were obtained by using probabilistic approaches for the region.

The seismotectonic information, seismicity data and earthquake catalogues were gathered, main active seismic sources were identified and seismic zones were considered to cover the potential active seismic regions. The seismic model based on logic tree method used two seismic source models, two declustered catalogues, three choices for earthquake recurrence parameters and maximum considered earthquakes and four ground motion predicting (attenuation) models (GMPE).

The results showed a wide range of seismic hazards levels in the study region. The peak ground acceleration (PGAs) for 475 years returns period ranges between 0.1 g in the north-west part of the region with low seismic activity, to 0.52 g in the south-west part with high levels of seismicity. The PGAs for a 2,475-year period, also ranged from 0.12 to 0.80 g for the same regions. The computed hazard results were compared to the acceptable level of seismic hazard in the region based on Iran seismic code.

A new probabilistic approach has been developed for obtaining seismic hazard maps and curves; these results would help engineers in design of earthquake-resistant structures.

To understand the impact of earthquake experience and education on awareness, a survey was conducted with 1,065 high school first grade students from five prefectures of Japan. Results showed that earthquake experience is not the prime factor to enhance awareness. Education, when it is confined to school education, can provide useful information as the knowledge base for earthquake. However, in the gradual path of knowing, realizing, deepening, decision and action, family, community, and self education are found to be more prominent. While, self education is important for realizing and deepening, family and community education play the most vital role for decision and actions. In school education, more active ways of disaster education through conversation, experiencing, and visual aids are found to be more effective. It is believed that school education, coupled with self, family and community education can help a student to develop a “culture of disaster preparedness”, which, in turn, will urge them to take right decisions and actions as an adult.