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Earthquake Hazard Mitigation In The New Madrid Seismic Zone: Science And Public Policy, Alice M. Orton, Zhenming Wang, Lanmin Wang, Edward W. Woolery

Report of Investigations--KGS

In the central United States, earthquake sources that are not well defined, long earthquake recurrence intervals, and uncertain ground-motion attenuation models have contributed to an overstatement of seismic hazard for the New Madrid Seismic Zone on the national seismic hazard maps published by the U.S. Geological Survey. A series of informal interviews in western Kentucky with local businesspersons, public officials, and other professionals in occupations associated with seismic-hazard mitigation discussed seismic-mitigation policies in relation to depressed local economy. Scientific and relative economic analysis was then performed using scenario earthquake models developed with the Federal Emergency management Agency's Hazus-MH software. The …