What you need to know
As part of our ongoing efforts to reduce and understand our risk to earthquakes, we've performed a seismic risk assessment for Vancouver’s buildings.
Our earthquake impact analyisis is part of a larger effort to develop policies, in partnership with the community and the Province, to reduce risk in our buildings. This is the first step of a multi-year process.
Earthquake risk: concentration of damage to buildings
Modelled scenario: magnitude 7.3 earthquake in the Strait of Georgia
This map is based on a simulated magnitude 7.3 earthquake, located about 30 km west of Vancouver at a depth of 5 to 10 kilometres. The map shows the potential concentration and severity of damage to buildings as a result of this earthquake scenario.
This map does not include damage to other types of infrastructure that may impact homes and buildings. Damage is possible across Vancouver and residents everywhere should take steps to prepare their homes and workplaces for earthquakes.
Vancouver is vulnerable to many different types of earthquakes. Earthquake science and modelling in this region continues to evolve providing more opportunities to get better prepared.
This is a single scenario that allows us to plan for earthquakes, but it is not a prediction of the actual earthquake we will face. This mapping only considers building damage, and does not reflect social impacts, infrastructure risk, emergency response, loss of life, or economic and recovery impacts.
There is strong potential to reduce risk to buildings and our community. We're learning from other cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Wellington, and Christchurch about different risk reduction strategies. We're working with experts and other levels of government to evaluate a range of policy options and to advocate for incentives and investment in earthquake resilient buildings and infrastructure.
We'll continue to update this page with new information about risk, and status of policy development and consultation.
Related work
This work is in Resilient Vancouver, a larger process to advance citywide resilience.