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Casualties Distribution in Human and Natural Hazards

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Mathematical Methods in Engineering

Abstract

Catastrophic events, such as wars and terrorist attacks, big tornadoes and hurricanes, huge earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and landslides, are always accompanied by a large number of casualties. The size distribution of these casualties have separately been shown to follow approximate power law (PL) distributions. In this paper, we analyze the number of victims of catastrophic phenomena, in particular, terrorism, and find double PL behavior. This means that the data set is better approximated by two PLs instead of one. We have plotted the two PL parameters corresponding to all terrorist events occurred in every year, from 1980 to 2010. We observe an interesting pattern in the chart, where the lines, that connect each pair of points defining the double PLs, are roughly aligned to each other.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, Institute of Engineering of Porto, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4200-072, Porto, Portugal

    Carla M. A. Pinto

  2. Centro de Matemática da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Carla M. A. Pinto

  3. UISPA, IDMEC - Polo FEUP Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    A. Mendes Lopes

  4. Department of Electrical Engineering, ISEP-Institute of Engineering of Polytechnic of Porto, Rua Dr António Bernardino de Almeida, 431, 4200-072, Porto, Portugal

    J. A. Tenreiro Machado

Authors
  1. Carla M. A. Pinto
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  2. A. Mendes Lopes
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  3. J. A. Tenreiro Machado
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carla M. A. Pinto .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Coimbra Institute of Engineering, Coimbra, Portugal

    Nuno Miguel Fonseca Ferreira

  2. Dept of Electrical Engineering, Institute of Engineering of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    José António Tenreiro Machado

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Pinto, C., Lopes, A., Machado, J. (2014). Casualties Distribution in Human and Natural Hazards. In: Fonseca Ferreira, N., Tenreiro Machado, J. (eds) Mathematical Methods in Engineering. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7183-3_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7183-3_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7182-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7183-3

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