Rapid earthquake response: The state-of-the art and recommendations with a focus on European systems

Systems for Rapid Response to Earthquakes (RRE) aim at providing reliable and near-real time ground-motion and loss estimates following an earthquake, in order to help authorities taking appropriate actions when needed. The purpose of this study is to review the state-of-the-art for RRE systems, focusing first on the tools and methods that have been developed for shake-map computation (i.e., taking into account the seismic recordings as well as macroseismic observations when available), in order to provide a map of the ground shaking intensity rapidly after an earthquake event. The second part focuses on the different approaches taken for rapid loss assessment, the ones based on shake-maps and the others. We give an overview of the current operating systems with emphasis on European ones, and we highlight their differences and identify the current gaps and pending issues. Finally, we call attention for the need to treat carefully uncertainties propagated at each calculation step, which added up are non-negligible, and are an important part of the result itself. Considering the full statistical distribution of loss and damage estimates provides more information than average or median values, and such statistics should therefore be provided by RRE systems and taken into account by decision-makers in order to take informed actions following an earthquake.