Estudio de vulnerabilidad de población e infraestructura ante un escenario de tsunami en la ciudad de Manta - Ecuador.

Abstract

Ecuador is a country with frequent seismic and tsunami-gene events, because it is located in a subduction zone between the plates of Nazca and South America. The main objective of the work is to assess the vulnerability of the population and infrastructure in the face of a tsunami event in the city of Manta-Ecuador. In order to evaluate the infrastructures, the fragility and vulnerability index functions were used and for the population it was studied only with the fragility functions. Manta has a population of 226,477 permanent inhabitants and a high tourist variability where the 9 national holidays were chosen during the year that allowed to evaluate the most dangerous scenario for the population. A hypocenter was proposed: 40 km northwest of Manta, oceanic depth: 3 km and magnitude at the time: 8 to perform the simulation, the analysis obtained floods of 8.61% of the total city. The analysis carried out by the fragility functions showed that 190,654 people would be harmed in January, obviously minors, old people, disabled groups and tourists would be more defenseless, for the case of the structures . value of 20,625 affected by the tsunami was calculated, this represented 36.45% in the structures that were involved in the flood zones with a range of 3,077- 3,375 m maximum flood depth. The result of this work will help to identify dangerous and safe areas, refuge buildings, routes and evacuation times in this city with population and tourist concentration.