ADSRI staff recently visited the sites of devastating earthquakes in China and Iran as part of the ARC project on the demographic consequences of Asian Disasters.

Zhongwei Zhao and Helen James visited the earthquake epicentre at Yingzue and another town at Beichuan in Sichuan Province in Southwest China where over 120,000 people died. Chinese central government policy has been to rebuild, in the case of Yingxue, on the same site and in the case of Beichuan, at another new purpose built city, 50 kilometres away in a plain area which is thought to be safer. At Beichuan they were hosted by the Population Research Institute of the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE) who are interested in establishing a research centre on Asian Disasters which will be utilizing a network approach. They will attend the Asian disasters conference we are organising for September 2013.

Meimanat Hosseini-Chavoshi, Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi and Helen James visited the Iran earthquake sites at Bam, where 30,000 people died, and outside Tabriz. They met with the Director-General of Kerman province (near Bam), the head of the Vital Statistics Unit at Bam who has a detailed data record of families affected by the earthquake, the deputy governor, and the chief executive of the privately funded rehabilitation foundation which takes care of those with disabilities, the elderly, orphans, and female headed households impacted by the earthquake. On the visit to Tabriz they were accompanied by the head of the Demography Department at the University of Tehran.

The research visit was highly productive and has resulted in key data bases being made available to the research team.

Photos of devastation and rebuilding after the Iran earthquake in 2012.