Designing rapid impact assessments for Switzerland

Immediately after the shaking of an earthquake has stopped, people want to know what has happened. This concern is not only sensational; those affected seek for advice on what to do next, want additional information they like to share it with their friends and family. This is also true for first responders, who welcome every available insight to plan their emergency response. Rapid impact assessments, automatically generated after an event to locate the affected area and estimate the impact of a specific earthquake in terms of human, infrastructure, and economic losses, can provide such information. Therewith, the information rapid impact assessments contain is of interest for professionals with and without a specific expertise in earthquake risk management, the media, and the interested public. To make use and take meaningful decisions based on this information, rapid impact assessments must be well accessible, clearly structured, useful, and understandable, and meet the needs of different user groups. Based on primary results of the first seismic risk model for Switzerland, we tested rapid impact assessments outputs designed following the state of the art in risk communication. From the feedback of different user groups, we derived recommendations on how to best design useful rapid impact assessments for Switzerland.