1. EARTHQUAKES AS A PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEM

Earthquakes have caused some one million deaths over the last two decades. Such an event as the Tangshan earthquake in Northern China, 1976, has been responsible for several hundred of thousands in a matter of minutes. The growing urbanization of the planet, including in quake-prone areas, with as a result vulnerable megapolis of up to 20 millions, forewarns of disasters to come. Engineers on their side design anti-seismic structures - the only conceivable mitigation measure at present - at a cost of billions. This “International Workshop on Earthquake Injury Epidemiology” intends to tackle the problem of mitigation or and response to earthquake, bringing together widely diversed expertise, from the structural engineer conceiving safe designs to the epidemiologist scoring the end-results.