Student: Atsatsa Antonio
Graduation date: December 2017
Capstone type: Non-thesis
Capstone project:
Measuring Disaster Risk Around Portland College Campuses
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In the field of disaster research, earthquakes are complex, interdisciplinary, and in dire need of being understood for their impacts. With the intention of framing an approach to get into this complex field and develop a confident grasp on earthquake resilience, I ask: how can we plan for, and respond to, the impacts earthquakes have on structures in urban areas? Using the urban area of Portland, Oregon; I provide a focused, understandable and repeatable methodology for exploring vulnerabilities and hazards to earthquakes, from which an understanding of earthquake resilience can be gained, generalized, and applied to broader contexts. As a thesis statement, I argue that the need for improvised shelter structures in earthquake-prone urban areas is a gauge of the earthquake resilience present within that area, in which the need for improvised shelter structures is based on the disaster risk present in the urban area. The distribution of disaster risk around Portland college campuses reflects the social, economic, and physical vulnerabilities of populations in hazardous locations.