Power Law and Entropy Analysis of Catastrophic Phenomena

Joint Authors

Pinto, Carla M. A.
Lopes, António M.
Tenreiro Machado, José António

Source

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Issue

Vol. 2013, Issue 2013 (31 Dec. 2013), pp.1-10, 10 p.

Publisher

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Publication Date

2013-02-07

Country of Publication

Egypt

No. of Pages

10

Main Subjects

Civil Engineering

Abstract EN

Catastrophic events, such as wars and terrorist attacks, tornadoes and hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and landslides, are always accompanied by a large number of casualties.

The size distribution of these casualties has separately been shown to follow approximate power law (PL) distributions.

In this paper, we analyze the statistical distributions of the number of victims of catastrophic phenomena, in particular, terrorism, and find double PL behavior.

This means that the data sets are better approximated by two PLs instead of a single one.

We plot the PL parameters, corresponding to several events, and observe an interesting pattern in the charts, where the lines that connect each pair of points defining the double PLs are almost parallel to each other.

A complementary data analysis is performed by means of the computation of the entropy.

The results reveal relationships hidden in the data that may trigger a future comprehensiveexplanation of this type of phenomena.

American Psychological Association (APA)

Tenreiro Machado, José António& Pinto, Carla M. A.& Lopes, António M.. 2013. Power Law and Entropy Analysis of Catastrophic Phenomena. Mathematical Problems in Engineering،Vol. 2013, no. 2013, pp.1-10.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1031975

Modern Language Association (MLA)

Tenreiro Machado, José António…[et al.]. Power Law and Entropy Analysis of Catastrophic Phenomena. Mathematical Problems in Engineering No. 2013 (2013), pp.1-10.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1031975

American Medical Association (AMA)

Tenreiro Machado, José António& Pinto, Carla M. A.& Lopes, António M.. Power Law and Entropy Analysis of Catastrophic Phenomena. Mathematical Problems in Engineering. 2013. Vol. 2013, no. 2013, pp.1-10.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1031975

Data Type

Journal Articles

Language

English

Notes

Includes bibliographical references

Record ID

BIM-1031975