Scholars called for the scientific management of seismic hazards at a symposium held recently by the Center for Policy Simulation under the CAS Institute of Policy and Management.

The seismic disaster management falls into four stages: pre-quake emergency plan formulation, emergency management at the outbreak of a seismic hazards, relief and rescue management during the disaster and post-quake management, according to CPS Director WANG Zheng.

He noted that the recent earthquake occurred in southwest China's Sichuan Province showed that China's organizational construction to deal with the disaster is primarily in good shape. However, traditional communication facilities such as the telegraph are overlooked because undue emphasis is put on advanced technology, resulting in a failure of rapid acquisition of related information.

At the same time, said Prof. Wang, efforts should be made to implement scientific governance over earthquake forecasts. He emphasized that, facing the outburst and devastating natural disasters such as an earthquake, Chinese seismologists should improve the earthquake forecasting and prediction reliability by making integrated applications of various techniques such as statistics, representation theory, and dynamic analysis. Efforts should also be made to combine special tasks with the mass line in the forecasting.

As to the emergency management at disaster outbreaks, he suggested that emergency scale classifications be made during earthquake forecasts in the same way as to those for hurricanes or typhoons. Governments at different levels will be responsible for releasing seismic warnings of various emergency scales, and for making relevant preventive preparations.

Regarding post-quake management, he proposed to establish a foundation for geological disaster-caused disabled persons so as to address their livelihood issues.

A sound public policy framework should be set up to improve China's work on major disaster forecasting, urged Prof. ZHAO Zuoquan of the Center.