Right now, there aren’t very many to choose from! We are still working on creating and uploading more scenarios. If you have several scenarios to choose from, you will want to think about your intended purpose. If you are trying to prepare for a multi-casualty scenario then you may want to choose a scenario with many fatalities. If you are interested in the scenario posing the greatest risk, you will want to choose one that is both likely and relatively high consequence. If you have specific questions about a scenario, please Contact Us.
Yes! More scenarios are coming soon. If there’s nothing in your area, we suggest you take a look at the probabilistic portion of the website. There, you will find great information about how your community ranks in terms of earthquake risk and what impacts you can expect over a range of timelines when considering all potential earthquake scenarios.
While we have a high confidence that these earthquake scenarios are possible, we have low confidence in how likely many of them are. For most earthquake sources in Canada, we don’t know enough about how often they rupture to answer how likely they are with confidence. Using recorded earthquakes we have a good understanding of how often earthquakes of a certain magnitude will occur in a large region, but it’s difficult to quantify the probability of a specific scenario.
As one way to understand the likelihood of shaking, you can compare the shaking from the scenario you’re looking at to the shaking expected by the National Building Code of Canada seismic hazard calculator. The calculator will show you the likelihood of experiencing this magnitude of shaking at your location of interest. Although this will not directly tell you the likelihood of the earthquake scenario, through this comparison, you will get information about the likelihood of the scenario’s shaking magnitude at your location of interest (which could be from the earthquake scenario you’re looking at, or other scenarios). This is valuable information in understanding the probability of earthquakes.
Average annual fatalities are the expected number of earthquake fatalities that could occur over time, expressed as an average per year. Earthquake fatalities are not expected to occur every year, rather, they occur during earthquake events and this value represents the total number of fatalities annualized over one year. Looking at values over a specific time period (like one year or 50 years) helps us understand impacts in a way that’s easier to compare to other more common hazards like floods.
It’s the probability that a given building will be damaged over a 50-year period. Probabilities for slight, moderate, extensive, and complete damage, or building collapse are provided, and each of these damage states have specific descriptions — take a look at the data dictionary or the exposure data FAQ below.
The probability of damage is also the portion of buildings in the area expected to experience the damage state over 50 years. So, in 50 years, the number also tells us how many of the buildings in the area may experience a given damage state.
A loss exceedance curve displays the economic loss from earthquakes that could be reached or exceeded in a given time period. These curves are plotted on a diagram with the x-axis being the economic loss and the y-axis being the time period, also known as a ‘return period’. The loss exceedance curves represent economic losses to buildings and contents and all dollar values are in 2019 Canadian dollars. Three lines are provided to show the range in potential values — the value labeled mean shows the average of all estimates, and the 5% and 95% values show upper and lower estimates.
Each ‘settled area’ and census subdivision in Canada is assigned two seismic risk ratings: a total impact rating and a percentage impact rating. They both represent the relative risk of a community compared to all other communities in Canada, but tell different stories. The total impact risk rating identifies how the total impact in your community compares to the total impacts expected for other communities in Canada. This leads to the largest, or most densely populated communities in earthquake zones having the highest total risk.
The percentage impact rating identifies how the percentage impact in this area compares to the percentage impacts expected for other communities in Canada. For example, Toronto is assigned a very high total risk rating because the high levels of development mean earthquakes could cause high consequences over time relative to less densely developed areas. However, Toronto is assigned a moderate percentage impact risk rating, because the earthquakes which could affect Toronto aren’t expected to be very strong, and would cause small consequences relative to its size — a relatively small portion of Toronto’s development would be impacted. In this percentage impact rating, many smaller communities show a high risk as a relatively high percentage of their total development is expected to be impacted by the shaking.
The building information is based on population and dwelling statistics reported in the 2016 census, a national inventory of businesses, and national models of building characteristics. A technical summary of how this information was generated is here. Building information is provided at the dissemination block area. All costs are reported in 2019 dollars.
For RiskProfiler, census areas were refined to areas where people live, called ‘settled areas’. For example, census areas were refined to show that people do not live in areas such as parks, mountain ranges, or lakes. This improves the accuracy of the assessment, especially in areas with low population density or variable population distribution. This also means that in some places on the map, such as the Yukon, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories, it can appear that there is no data for parts of the Territories. Information about seismic risk does exist in these areas, however, it is shown only for populated areas.
The information is from the 2016 census. We hope to update it with the 2021 census information soon.
RiskProfiler’s probabilistic risk assessment incorporates a Social Vulnerability Index developed by NRCan. A community’s or neighbourhood’s social vulnerability and capacity are impossible to fully represent with an index and community input is needed to accurately characterize a community’s unique risk. The social vulnerability index is included to consider one aspect of social impacts and should be used in decision-making alongside community input. A paper describing the index is linked in the Additional Documentation section.
A rounding schema was followed to round the values based on significant figures and the meaning of the data. The rounding scheme was developed to reflect the precision of the calculated values. For example, dollar values were rounded so that values less than 1000 are shown as <1000 and values greater than 1000 are rounded to two significant figures. For counts of injuries or building damages, values less than 1 are shown as 0, values between 1 and 10 are shown as <10, and values greater than 10 are shown to two significant figures. Disaster debris follow a similar scheme with the threshold of 100 used. For probabilistic data, values less than 0.01 are shown with one significant figure, and values greater than 0.01 are shown to two significant figures.
The rounding was completed for data display and comprehension. To use values in further calculations, please use non-rounded values with consideration of their precision. For non-rounded values, please download the original data.
The different levels of building damage are defined by the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency in section 5.3.3.1 of the HAZUS Earthquake Model Technical Manual (version 4.2), and can be summarized as follows.
Slight damage is mostly small cracks and minor slipping at bolts. Slightly damaged buildings are still habitable and may not even seek repairs if they are under-insured or their deductibles are high.
Moderate damage is characterized by diagonal cracks, with some larger cracks expected on walls with door or window openings. These buildings are still habitable.
Extensive damage involves significant alteration to the shape and structure of the building, which may include partial collapse. These buildings may be conditionally habitable. It can mean large through-the-wall diagonal cracks, visibly buckled walls, large lateral displacements, missing bricks, or a falling of the building off its supports/anchoring.
Complete damage is a building which has become dangerously unstable or collapsed. It will likely have failed walls, beams, columns, anchors, and/or connections, as well as large permanent lateral displacements. Collapsed buildings are a fraction of completely damaged buildings.
The injuries presented in RiskProfiler are for daytime. Advanced users can download the full dataset to explore injuries for night and transit times. Similar to the different types of building damage, the different classifications of injuries are defined by the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency in section 12.1.1 of the HAZUS Earthquake Model Technical Manual (version 4.2), and can be summarized as follows.
Daytime first aid injuries — number of persons expected to suffer basic first-aid treatment (Severity Level 1) in the earthquake scenario if it occurs during daytime hours.
Daytime noncritical hospital injuries — number of persons expected to suffer non-life-threatening injuries requiring specialized medical treatment (Severity Level 2) in the earthquake scenario if it occurs during daytime hours.
Daytime critical hospital injuries — number of persons expected to suffer life-threatening injuries requiring hospital admissions (Severity Level 3) in the earthquake scenario if it occurs during daytime hours.
Daytime fatalities and entrapments — number of expected fatalities and entrapments resulting from complete building damage and/or collapse (Severity Level 4) in the earthquake scenario if it occurs during daytime hours.
Economic loss estimates for buildings include the losses to the structural and nonstructural elements of a building. Economic losses are for the building and its contents. Losses related to disruption time, infrastructure damage, or secondary hazards are not included.
All financial loss estimates are in 2019 dollars.
Seismic risk models have many sources of uncertainty. These can be related to things that we can never constrain ahead of time, like uncertainty in how big an earthquake will be, where it will happen, and what time of day it will be. There are also uncertainties in our model, which can be related to not having enough information yet about a certain seismic zone or a certain building’s performance. We try to manage these uncertainties by running many versions of each model, and reporting the average results.
If you are interested and have GIS capabilities, you can download the probabilistic risk assessment results to inspect our 5th and 95th percentile values, to get a sense for the range of plausible outcomes.
If this modelling doesn’t align with your expectation for your local area and you want to get more information about why, let us know. It is likely because RiskProfiler is using different exposure information or earthquake scenarios than you may be using. RiskProfiler may be using updated information, or you may have more locally specific modelling — get in touch with us to discuss.
We use the Canadian census geometries in our model. In the north, especially, the Census geometries are split into really large rural blocks, with communities being contained in separate and relatively small blocks. If there are no buildings in these large rural blocks, then no results show up on our map, so it can look like there is no data in a large region. The first step is to try zooming in on your community, to see if it’s just so small that it was hard to see at a national scale.
As mentioned in our intended use statement and disclaimer, our exposure model is meant to be representative. This means that it is not based on a building-by-building survey, but rather it is a statistical estimate of the buildings in the area. It’s possible that, unfortunately, we may have missed some small communities or buildings. If so, please let us know through the Contact Us page!
Take a look at our Additional Documentation section to find more details about the modelling shown in RiskProfiler.
We consider the economic losses, damage to buildings, injuries, housing disruption, workplace disruption, displaced households, shelter requirements, and generation of debris. All of these are calculated for baseline conditions, and for retrofitted conditions.
Consequences related to disruption, infrastructure damage, other social impacts, potential destabilization, and secondary hazards such as fire following are not included.
You can use this information to inform community understanding of earthquake risk and inform risk reduction decisions. This information, considered alongside its limitations and local context, can show high priority areas for risk reduction, show earthquake risk relative to the risk of other hazards, and much more. If you use the information in RiskProfiler, let us know how through the Contact Us page.
Take a look at the Taking Action information on the website for helpful references.
Yes! You can download the data here.
An earthquake scenario describes a potential earthquake and its consequences. Scenarios are defined by a magnitude, location, fault type, and are developed for specific faults that can produce large earthquakes.
When multiple earthquake scenarios are combined, the result is called probabilistic earthquake risk. Probabilistic earthquake risk represents the potential consequences of all earthquakes that may occur over a defined time period from known earthquake sources. For example, probabilistic earthquake risk analysis can estimate the average annual economic losses from earthquakes or the economic loss expected to occur about once every 500 years.
Probabilistic seismic risk considers the impact of all possible earthquakes, over a time period of interest. To explore the risk in your area, please select an indicator below.