Earthquakes: How Iceland Mitigates Them

Icelandic Civil Protection operates on two levels. They have set in place plans for a generic emergency and how people should react in this event and specific plans that deal with particular hazards, locations, and sites. They have tailored emergency plans to match a local hazard faced by people living in particular parts of the island. This authority seeks to education people on these specific hazards by practicing evacuation drills in local schools. An important step they take is to promote local public awareness through pamphlets that discuss the risk in various hazard area and what to do in the such an event. Local authorities have set evacuation plans in place in order to mitigate the risk of hazards such as earthquakes. In the event of a hazard, local schools are used as emergency aid centers. Scientists use seismographs surrounding a known hazard area in order to monitor them and immediately relay the information to the local district commissioner in the event a hazard is predicted to occur. The commissioner is then responsible for notifying resident's to evacuate to designated areas.

It is common for Iceland to experience multiple earthquakes a week.In the above photo, Iceland's seisimicity was rated by its magnitide and ranged from M. 1.4- M. 3.5 over the course of 66 earthquakes experienced this week. Iceland experiences both to a strike-slip fault interaction in Southern Iceland and off the northern coast along with dip-slip tectonic plate interaction in other areas of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It is along these faults that most of Iceland's earthquakes occur. They are also experienced in areas where there is volcanic activity, as well. 

Engineers reinforce buildings with steel bars throughout the structure. There are also limitations on the proximity of adjacent buildings may be built near each other. This is to prevent pounding effects experienced during earthquakes. They have also adopted building codes similar to that of California and now moving towards building codes practiced in Europe's Code 8. Timber and solid concrete structures have proven to be quite robust against earthquakes so engineers have not sought to reconstruct such buildings. Locals purchase disaster insurance in order to protect their properties in the event of a high intensity earthquake. 

Sources: http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/10/407/2010/nhess-10-407-2010.pdf

Education Facilities and Risk Management Natural Disasters by OECD

https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes/iceland.html

Photo taken from LogicSquaD's Blog#1 Earthquake in Iceland in May 2008