Destruction from earthquakes depends on many factors, including magnitude, occurrence depth and closeness to epicenter. One measure that may relate destructive force for buildings and infrastructure would be jerk magnitudes and durations.
Recall that jerk is the time derivative of acceleration, so destructive forces would likely be correlated to the product of building's jerk and mass. In addition, jerk from earthquakes would have horizontal as well as vertical components
What are measured jerk magnitudes (via jerk-meters) for various recent earthquake magnitudes?
