The World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) was selected as the implementing partner of the “Africa Disaster Risk Assessment and Financing Program”, which is part of an EU-supported effort to develop an analytical basis for risk financing and to accelerate the implementation of a comprehensive disaster risk reduction in Sub-Saharan African regions. The project title was “Building Disaster Resilience to Natural Hazards in Sub-Saharan African Regions, Countries and Communities”. The aim of the program was to support the development of multi-risk financing strategies, to help African countries take informed decisions in the mitigation of the impacts of disasters as well as in the improvement of their financial response capacity.

The consortium was formed by Risk Engineering and Design (RED) and Evaluación de Riesgos Naturales (ERN), which were awarded the project to support GFDRR in the development of national-level earthquake risk profiles for three countries in Sub-Saharan Africa – Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. The project was then extended to other three African countries: Cabo Verde, Malawi and Mozambique. The risk profiles developed provided loss metrics related to the affected population, damage to physical assets and impact on GDP.

The objectives of the project were:

• To develop probabilistic national-level earthquake risk models for Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda and then for Cabo Verde, Malawi and Mozambique comprising the effects of ground shaking only.
• To provide preliminary risk information for each country as inputs for World Bank / GFDRR risk profiles, country partnerships and consideration of risk financing and insurance strategies (e.g. Year Loss Tables, Loss Exceedance curves, Average Annual Losses, spatial datasets comprising hazard footprints and loss footprints).
• To provide an estimate of future earthquake risk for each country for the year 2050, based on one selected exposure projection

The team carried out the following tasks:

• Development of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis
• Development of physical vulnerability models for buildings, critical facilities and transportation networks
• Development of probabilistic earthquake risk analyses for the evaluation of loss metrics for the following lines of business: General building stock, Governmental building stock, Education building stock, Healthcare building stock, Energy generation facilities, Transportation Network: Road, Transportation Network: Railways, Transportation Network: Bridges.
• Development of probabilistic earthquake risk analyses for the evaluation of impact on population and GDP
• Estimation of future risk for each country for year 2050 based on exposure projection

A new seismic hazard model was developed for the area of interest through the creation of an instrumental earthquake catalog, the characterization of an area source model, the selection of a set of ground motion prediction equations suitable for the area, and the creation of a stochastic event set. The seismic risk analyses were performed considering the exposure datasets provided by GFDRR, processed in order to include information as required for the seismic risk calculations.

Country specific fragility and vulnerability models were developed with the OpenQuake Platform for buildings, critical facilities and transportation networks. An analytical approach was followed to develop the new vulnerability model, considering the local construction practice and uncertainty associated with the estimation of losses for classes of assets of similar characteristics.

All the data were incorporated in a specialized software, CAPRA, for performing the risk analysis and to compute the main loss metrics (e.g. loss exceedance curves, average annual losses) considering current socio-economic conditions and future projections for the year 2050.