Timescape of the earthquake disasters in iran: the intricacies of earthquake time and earthquake disaster risk reduction

Abstract

Time is a crucial coordinate for seismology, though often its ubiquity is forgotten by society as it is taken for granted and its potential is unexplored within the arena of earthquake disaster risk reduction. Earthquake disasters build up over time. An earthquake is a dramatic context that takes just tiny units of time to bring an immense tragedy of human loss, suffering and destruction. This paper targets the exploration of the timescape for four large earthquake disasters in ran: am in 2003, udbar in 1990, abas in 1978 and uyin ahra in 1962. An investigation of the intricacies of earthquake time and earthquake disaster time is performed for these four earthquake disasters which covers a time interval of 52 years. These large earthquake disasters are considered as chronological milestones for the Iranian seismic timescape. This contributes to model seismic patterns with the aim to reduce the epistemic uncertainty and encourage better earthquake preparedness and earthquake disaster risk reduction. It is found that two perspectives, a geological perspective and earthquake disaster survivors' perspective and their associated aspects of time present a great potential for earthquake disaster risk reduction. A dramatic repetition of earthquake disaster time not only in time, but also in various places in ran, highlights that living with earthquakes in ran requires a better articulation of the relationship between the time of nature and the time of society and local communities. Furthermore, learning to live with earthquake time requires a long‐term mitigation of the earthquake hazard and improvement of the resilience of local communities.