We propose a method to calculate damage and human losses for cities in
the developing world by averaging over an entire city, or its administrative
districts. Bucharest, Romania, serves as an example. First, we modeled this
city as located at a single coordinate point. We transformed the census
information on building types, ages and height into EMS-98 vulnerability
classes and distribute the population into them. We assumed a seismic load of
MSK Intensity= 8 (M7.4 1977 Vrancea earthquake). Validating our model by
comparison with casualties reported in 1977, we find differences of 20% to
30%. We reduced these errors to about 4%, by adjusting the distribution of
building types into vulnerability classes, based on their performance in the
1977 earthquake. Calibrations of this type will be necessary for most
developing countries. In a second step, we modeled Bucharest with six
districts, in which the distribution of people into building types and the average
soil conditions are known. This is our preferred model. We also calculated the
soil properties that would be estimated from topography, if microzonation
would not be available. The agreement was satisfactory. We propose this
method to model important cities in earthquake prone areas of the developing
world.