Uncertainty and Correlation in Seismic Vulnerability Functions of Building Classes

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 1515-1539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vitor Silva

The majority of the existing seismic risk studies use a deterministic approach to define vulnerability functions, despite the well-recognized large variability in the probability of loss ratio conditional on ground-shaking intensities. This study explored a statistical framework to simulate this variability, considering the existing correlation between assets separated by a given distance. The impact that these vulnerability modeling approaches may have in probabilistic seismic risk assessment is evaluated considering three fictitious building portfolios with distinct characteristics. To this end, loss exceedance curves and average annualized losses are compared, and recommendations are drawn regarding the optimal vulnerability modeling approach.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordana Pavić ◽  
Marijana Hadzima-Nyarko ◽  
Borko Bulajić

Due to increases in the number of inhabitants and their concentrations in densely populated areas, there is a growing need in modern society to be cautious towards the impact of catastrophic natural events. An earthquake is a particularly major example of this. Knowledge of the seismic vulnerability of buildings in Europe and around the world has deepened and expanded over the last 20 years, as a result of the many devastating earthquakes. In this study, a review of seismic risk assessment methods in Croatia was presented with respect to the hazard, exposure, and vulnerability of buildings in the fourth largest city (Osijek) in Croatia. The proposed algorithm for a detailed risk assessment was applied to a database and is currently in its initial stage.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 86-93
Author(s):  
Georgiana Bunea ◽  
Cornel Doniga ◽  
Gabriela Maria Atanasiu

Throughout its history, Iasi municipality has been subjected to many important seismic actions caused by earthquakes produced in Vrancea area, Romania. The impact of these extreme events upon the town increased in time as it developed, more buildings were constructed and the population density rose. The classes of buildings identified in Iasi municipality have been designed on different seismic standards, some of them being erected without taking into account the effect of seismic actions. The differences between the seismic norms’ regulations and the important earthquake’s history some of the buildings have, are outlining the need of seismic risk assessment in Iasi municipality. This paper aims to present some of the results of the seismic risk study in Iasi municipality, which was based on the completed seismic risk surveys and on the regulations of seismic standards. In this study, only the dwelling structures built before 1990 were considered, and the results were distributed on neighborhoods, for obtaining a general perspective on the seismic risk state of each area, by considering the buildings’ seismic vulnerability.


Author(s):  
Rikito Hisamatsu ◽  
Rikito Hisamatsu ◽  
Kei Horie ◽  
Kei Horie

Container yards tend to be located along waterfronts that are exposed to high risk of storm surges. However, risk assessment tools such as vulnerability functions and risk maps for containers have not been sufficiently developed. In addition, damage due to storm surges is expected to increase owing to global warming. This paper aims to assess storm surge impact due to global warming for containers located at three major bays in Japan. First, we developed vulnerability functions for containers against storm surges using an engineering approach. Second, we simulated storm surges at three major bays using the SuWAT model and taking global warming into account. Finally, we developed storm surge risk maps for containers based on current and future situations using the vulnerability function and simulated inundation depth. As a result, we revealed the impact of global warming on storm surge risks for containers quantitatively.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Amirsardari ◽  
Massoud Sofi ◽  
Elisa Lumantarna ◽  
Iswandi Imran ◽  
Colin Duffield

Indonesia is a high seismic region and one of the most vulnerable countries prone to experiencing damaging earthquakes. It is critical that lifeline infrastructure remain operational or is quickly remediated after an earthquake to minimise physical, social, and economical losses. Not much work has been carried out in understanding the effect of earthquakes on transportation infrastructure systems. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the impact of earthquakes on the transportation infrastructure in Indonesia. This is achieved by firstly reviewing the frameworks and tools for conducting seismic risk assessment of lifeline infrastructure. The critical components of the transportation system are then identified. Various forms of transportation infrastructure damage caused by earthquakes are discussed. An overview of the damaging earthquakes for the past 20 years is presented. Finally, conclusions and recommendations are provided about the future work required for conducting risk assessment of the transportation infrastructure in Indonesia


Author(s):  
Nina N. Serdar ◽  
Jelena R. Pejovic ◽  
Radenko Pejovic ◽  
Miloš Knežević

<p>It is of great importance that traffic network is still functioning in post- earthquake period, so that interventions in emergency situations are not delayed. Bridges are part of the traffic system that can be considered as critical for adequate post-earthquake response. Their seismic response often dominate the response and reliability of overall transportation system, so special attention should be given to risk assessment for these structures. In seismic vulnerability and risk assessment bridges are often classified as regular or irregular structures, dependant on their configuration. Curved bridges are considered as irregular and unexpected behaviour during seismic excitation is noticed in past earthquake events. Still there are an increasing number of these structures especially in densely populated urban areas since curved configuration is often suitable to accommodate complicated location conditions. In this paper special attention is given to seismic risk assessment of curved reinforce concrete bridges through fragility curves. Procedure for developing fragility curves is described as well as influence of radius curvature on their seismic vulnerability is investigated. Since vulnerability curves provide probability of exceedance of certain damage state, four damage states are considered: near collapse, significant damage, intermediate damage state, onset of damage and damage limitation. As much as possible these damage states are related to current European provisions. Radius of horizontal curvature is varied by changing subtended angle: 25 °, 45 ° and 90 °. Also one corresponding straight bridge is analysed. Nonlinear static procedure is used for developing of fragility curves. It was shown that probability of exceedance of certain damage states is increased as subtended angle is increased. Also it is determined that fragility of curved bridges can be related to fragility of straight counterparts what facilitates seismic evaluation of seismic vulnerability of curved bridges structures.</p>


2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 1095-1110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Hwang ◽  
Yi-Huei Chiu ◽  
Wei-Yao Chen ◽  
Ban-Jwu Shih

This paper presents an investigation on damage to natural gas pipelines in Taichung City from the Chi-Chi Taiwan earthquake. This paper addresses damage due to ground shaking effects and does not address damage due to large ground deformations. Four parameters, that is, peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, Arias intensity, and spectral intensity, are used to represent ground shaking. Based on pipe repair data and recorded strong motion data, regression analyses of pipe repair rates were carried out to develop seismic vulnerability functions. From the regression analysis results, Arias intensity is considered as the best parameter for the derivation of seismic vulnerability function. The seismic vulnerability functions derived in this study are for steel gas pipelines with mechanical joints and the pipelines are located in firm soils and in the footwall area subject to ground shaking from an earthquake caused by a thrust fault.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elfrida Shehu ◽  
Klodian Skrame

&lt;p&gt;Albania, the small country in the western Balkan, is a disaster-prone country. It ranks as one of the countries in the world with the highest economic risk from natural hazards events. During the past several decades, in average, Albania has been hit by about one major geological event per year. The impact of disasters in Albania are significantly compounded by a relatively high degree of poverty, lack of infrastructure maintenance, unsafe building and land use practices, linked to rapid urbanization, exploitation of natural resources (overgrazing of pasture, overexploitation of forests and riverbeds, etc.) as well as some other consequences of the transition from a centralized to an open marked economy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;From a geological point of view, Albania is a young and very dynamic territory and is very vulnerable to the geological and hydro-geological hazards as: earthquakes, landslides, flooding, torrential rains, river erosion, coastal erosion and avalanches that cover almost the entire territory. Due to these conditions its average annual losses count for about 2.5% of its GDP.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Durr&amp;#235;s earthquakes of 2019 had a huge impact on the Albanian economy. The city of Durr&amp;#235;s, Thuman&amp;#235;, Tirana, Vora, Shijak and their villages suffered considerable damage after the earthquakes of September 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt;, 2019 of Mw 5.4 and November 26&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;, 2019 of Mw 6.2. The main event of the &lt;sup&gt;26th&lt;/sup&gt; November caused the deaths of 51 persons and the damaging of hundreds of buildings. The degree of damages produced by these earthquakes has been, in some cases, significantly enhanced by the characteristics of the earthquake ground motion affected by the local subsurface soil structure and the quality of the constructions. The situations during and after the seismic events highlight the indispensable need of the seismic microzonation studies for the entire Albanian territory and emergency plans for the main cities of the country.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This paper shows the impact of the earthquake event on the housing market value by treating the data collected in the city of Durr&amp;#235;s for the period December 2019 - September2020.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main goal of the paper is to correlate the obtained results with the engineering-geological and geophysical conditions of the city of Durr&amp;#1105;s and the seismic vulnerability of the building.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The findings of this study can be considered as a first step for in-depth studies aiming to calculate the impact of seismic risk and the change in the risk perception on the housing prices.&lt;/p&gt;


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1863-1890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armando Aguilar-Meléndez ◽  
Luis G. Pujades ◽  
Alex H. Barbat ◽  
Mario G. Ordaz ◽  
Josep de la Puente ◽  
...  

Structures ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 889-913
Author(s):  
Moustafa Moufid Kassem ◽  
Fadzli Mohamed Nazri ◽  
Ehsan Noroozinejad Farsangi ◽  
Chee Ghuan Tan

Author(s):  
Antonio C. Caputo

Seismic vulnerability of industrial plants processing hazardous substances is widely documented, and thousands of such facilities are located in areas of medium to high seismicity near population centers. Nevertheless, with the exception of the nuclear industry, national or international standards do not establish any procedure for the overall seismic risk assessment of industrial process plants located in earthquake-prone areas. Moreover, existing Probabilistic Seismic Risk Assessment (PSRA) methods developed by the nuclear industry are not readily applicable to process plants. In order to overcome this limitation, in this paper a novel general-purpose PSRA method is presented, able to systematically generate potential starting scenarios, deriving from simultaneous interactions of the earthquake with each separate equipment, and to account for propagation of effects between distinct equipment (i.e. Domino effects) keeping track of multiple simultaneous and possibly interacting chains of accidents. This allows to dynamically generate damage scenarios, and to rank their risk levels determining the critical process units that can be involved.


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