The information presented on RiskProfiler is intended to inform community decision-making, with consideration of its limitations. See the Disclaimer for details and legal restrictions.
RiskProfiler is intended to provide information for decision-making and should be used alongside community validation and engagement. Community context should be incorporated into all decision-making and used to validate this statistical assessment.
Key considerations for understanding the modelling results include the following. They are further explored in the FAQ and other documentation.
RiskProfiler provides estimates about the potential impacts from earthquakes. The results are likely an underestimation as they only account for direct damage to buildings and inhabitants. Potential indirect damages such as business interruptions and damages to critical infrastructure, utilities, vehicles or high consequence facilities such as dams are not included. Impacts from secondary hazards such as earthquake aftershocks, liquefaction, landslides, or fire following are also not included.
The information is based on national-scale models of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, and are intended to represent typical conditions in any given area, but may not precisely represent local conditions. Results should not be used for site-specific applications.
These scenarios are HYPOTHETICAL, but represent credible events which may occur. This suite of scenarios is based primarily on historical earthquakes, known faults, and/or background seismicity levels consistent with Canada’s National Seismic Hazard Model. It is by no means an exhaustive list of all potential scenarios that are possible.
This modelling approach uses state-of-the-art techniques and data, but is subject to significant sources of uncertainty inherent in any seismic risk model. Therefore, scenarios should be regarded as estimates, representing the average result of thousands of realizations of model parameters. Furthermore, the exposure model used herein is a representative inventory rather than a true database of the built environment. Results are not to be used for any building- or site-specific application, or any other domain which would require oversight by an accredited professional. The results may be used in aggregate for estimating the likely impacts of certain representative earthquake scenarios on a region of interest such as a municipality or regional district. For any questions on the appropriate use of these data, please contact our team.
An earthquake scenario describes a potential earthquake and its consequences. Scenarios are defined by a magnitude, location, fault type, and are developed for specific faults that can produce large earthquakes.
When multiple earthquake scenarios are combined, the result is called probabilistic earthquake risk. Probabilistic earthquake risk represents the potential consequences of all earthquakes that may occur over a defined time period from known earthquake sources. For example, probabilistic earthquake risk analysis can estimate the average annual economic losses from earthquakes or the economic loss expected to occur about once every 500 years.
Probabilistic seismic risk considers the impact of all possible earthquakes, over a time period of interest. To explore the risk in your area, please select an indicator below.