The case of the Mw 8.8 mega earthquake of central Chile: Analysis applying an accident investigation model

The impact, in its various facets, caused by natural disasters is increasing sharply. Poor resilience contributes to increasing the impact on society throughout history; natural disasters have exerted a heavy toll of death and suffering. Given this, natural disasters present a big challenge to society today concerning how they are to be mitigated so as to produce an acceptable risk is a question which has come to the fore in extreme ways recently. The Mw 8.8 Maule earthquake of 27 February 2010 has been studied in great detail. The paper presents some preliminary results of the analysis of the Chilean earthquake that occurred in February 2010 by applying the Management Oversight Risk Tree (MORT) model. The MORT may be regarded as a structured checklist in the form of a complex fault tree model that is intended to ensure that all aspects of an organization's management are looked into when assessing the possible causes of an incident. The MORT accident investigation model has been applied extensively to the analysis of accident/incidents that have occurred in industries such as the oil and gas, nuclear, aviation etc. It may be argued that the model has the potentiality to be applied to the analysis of natural disasters such as mega earthquakes. It is hoped that by conducting such analysis, lessons can be learnt so that the impact of natural disasters such as the Chilés Mega Earthquake can be mitigated in future similar events.