Haiti earthquake: seismological issues

Abstract

Following Saavedra (1996) the catastrophe shows society vulnerabilities, which are present before the physical event. In Haiti case, the January 12th 2010 seismic crisis showed the huge cultural, political, physical and socioeconomic vulnerability of the country. In this short note are described the technical data of main shock and aftershocks, also it shows a preliminary probabilistic hazard seismic assessment of Port au Prince, which evidences a lack of instrumental data. A pseudo deterministic assessment using Wells and Coppersmith (1994) and Stirling et al (2002) approaches are used. Finally a discussion and some conclusions are presented