This research investigates the post-earthquake performances of structures in four rural villages in the Moroccan Atlas, emphasizing common construction system characteristics and design flaws that render buildings susceptible to seismic events. Village selection was based on a prior multispectral satellite-image study, proving effective for planning high-impact, post-earthquake field campaigns. The significance of this research resides in on-site data collection, facilitating the physical assessment of earthquake-induced damage and identification of inherent vulnerabilities in construction systems. The constructions in the study area exhibited structural design deficiencies, inadequate construction techniques, and urban modifiers, leading to damage extensively documented in the literature, as well as less-documented unique damage. Predominant seismic-design shortcomings in the study area included subpar material quality, insufficient earthquake-resistant design, and unskilled labor. In situ data were complemented by a global geospatial approach using differential synthetic aperture radar interferometry with Copernicus Sentinel 1 data. Once calibrated the proposed methodology with field data, the analysis of remote sensing processing results, allow assessing the damages in other earthquake-affected areas, including those not visited in the field but also impacted by the seismic event.

This study investigates the relationships between surface deformations and groundwater management in the Metropolitan Region of Guatemala (MRG), a geologically complex area subjected to different types of ground deformation, integrating five municipalities around Guatemala City. Deformation patterns were characterized through Multi-Temporal Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (MT-InSAR) and compared with groundwater piezometric data. The MT-InSAR technique allowed the identification of the main deformation areas in the MRG. Previously reported maximum subsidence rates ranged from −60 mm/year to −20 mm/year, with local maxima fitting with the extraction well fields of Villanueva and Petapa, in the South basin. Subsidence bowl or depression cone deformation areas were identified and located, similar to those described in the literature for other urban areas, such as Jakarta, Semarang, and Mexico City, among others. This study contextualizes these findings within the detailed hydrogeological framework of the region, highlighting the long-standing generalized exploitation of groundwater resources for urban, agricultural, and industrial uses. Historical data on water wells, piezometric levels, and groundwater flow patterns indicate that groundwater extraction has surpassed the natural recharge rates, particularly in the southern and eastern hydrological basins in the study area. This research identifies a critical need for sustainable water management, emphasizing the importance of integrating MT-InSAR into groundwater monitoring schemes.

In 2017, Mexico was struck by the most powerful earthquake since the 1932 Jalisco earthquake. Moving beyond the predominant focus on climatic events and short-term effects in existing literature on disaster impacts, this study provided new evidence on how seismic shocks generated unequal impacts across the labor market in a developing economy. It examined disparities not only across workers and across firm characteristics but also within firms—by legal form, ownership type, informality status, and size—and among workers, based on pre-disaster job quality. Additionally, it captured the temporal dynamics of these effects, distinguishing between those that appeared immediately and those that developed or persisted over time. The empirical strategy was grounded in a panel event study design that integrates difference-in-differences estimation with measures of earthquake exposure. By contrasting treatment definitions based on an exogenous geophysical indicator and official disaster area classifications, the study strengthened causal identification and captured both direct physical shocks and institutional responses. This dual approach contributes to the disaster impact evaluation literature by offering a more comprehensive assessment. The evidence reveals an asymmetry in post-disaster adjustment: firms did not exhibit statistically significant impacts either immediately or over time, while workers appeared to have absorbed the consequences. This suggests that firms may have partially displaced the shock onto their workforce, using adjustment mechanisms associated with declines in job quality among vulnerable workers. The evidence underscores the need to expand post-disaster recovery frameworks beyond physical reconstruction, highlighting the importance of integrating labor rights into resilient and socially inclusive post-disaster strategies, particularly in developing economies.