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Earthquake events are inevitable but the consequences of earthquake disasters are partially controllable using an effective risk management system, since the seismic risk is the interaction of ground shaking intensity with the built environment. A systematic risk-based method is proposed for assessing the resilience capacities of school buildings exposed to varying levels of seismic risk. This approach screens and monitors the equivalent seismic performance of buildings by the means of new composite risk index (FSRi). The process of performance assessment of existing buildings is usually performed through walk-down surveys and associated with expert judgments which are often highly subjective. The pervasive nature of uncertainty within the risk assessment process often ignored or not completely reflected within the existing models. To handle the uncertainty associated with risk attributes, fuzzy set theory was used to characterize the uncertain qualitative information. The application of the model was applied to retrofitting school buildings in Iran. The screening results reveal that the composite risk index (FSRi) does not necessarily follow its factors' trends and therefore relying on sole factors such as hazard and vulnerability may mislead the decision making process . Therefore seismic mitigation decisions should be made in compliance with the multi dimensional aspects of seismic risk as an aggregated index rather , such as FSRi.

The deployment of seismic risk management is fraught with issues of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty which pose critical challenges in assessing, modelling and management. The complexity of earthquake impacts and the uncertain nature of information necessitate establishing a risk management system to address the risk of many the effects of seismic events in a reliable and realistic way. This study was launched to review and criticize appropriate risk assessment methods for different seismic applications focusing on general characteristics from a systems perspective. The outcome of this study demonstrates the importance of a system perspective, providing a deeper insight into the background characteristics and the potential challenges involved within seismic risk management. This allows users to compare various systems and to choose the most appropriate approach according to the scope, size, accuracy and complexity of the application.

Seismic risk management is multidisciplinary process in which broad range of variables as well as great deal of uncertainty involved with both parameters and modeling process. Disaster system can be seen as combination of not only physical and structural consequence of a natural hazard but also socio-economical , environmental impacts also influence the assessment process. Decision making in such complex system that often rely on subjective and objective knowledge should be handled though a knowledge based approach. The study was launched to review and discuss multifaceted character of seismic risk and examining the feasibility of knowledge base system to model such problem effectively and efficiently. Such knowledge base system should capable of (1)integrating various perspective of seismic risk (2) conducting seismic risk assessment and (3) handling uncertainty within risk assessment and to support mitigation strategies.

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