RISe: Illustrating Georeferenced Data of Seismic Risk and Loss Assessment Studies Using Google Earth

Predicting the consequences of large earthquakes to the built environment is of high importance for disaster control, civil protection and emergency planning. A number of software tools are now available to estimate physical building damage and associated losses in terms of casualties and economic losses. In recent years, SELENA, a seismic risk and loss assessment software which makes use of the capacity spectrum method (CSM), has been developed into a widely applicable tool. Since SELENA functions independently from a Geographic Information System, we developed RISe (Risk Illustrator for Selena), a stand-alone tool that illustrates SELENA files in Google (TM) Earth. RISe is customized to the SELENA file structure and allows easy conversion of all geographically referenced files such as building inventory data, soil conditions, ground motion values, as well as final risk and loss results. RISe is distributed as public domain open-source software that allows the user to take full advantage of Google (TM) Earth's features including high-resolution satellite images from nearly every built environment worldwide.