Assessment of Enhanced Dempster-Shafer Theory for Uncertainty Modeling in a GIS-Based Seismic Vulnerability Assessment Model, Case Study—Tabriz City

Abstract

Earthquake is one of the natural disasters which threaten many lives every year. It is impossible to prevent earthquakes from occurring; however, it is possible to predict the building damage, human and property losses in advance to mitigate the adverse effects of the catastrophe. Seismic vulnerability assessment is a complex uncertain spatial decision making problem due to intrinsic uncertainties such as lack of complete data, vagueness in experts’ comments and uncertainties in the numerical data/relations. It is important to identify and model the incorporated uncertainties of seismic vulnerability assessment in order to obtain realistic predictions. Fuzzy sets theory can model the vagueness in weights of the selected criteria and relationships of the criteria with building damage. Dempster’s combination rule is useful for fusion of information on the vulnerability of the buildings which leads to decreased uncertainty of the results. However, when there is a conflict among information sources, classical Dempster rule of combination is not efficient. This paper analyses the uncertainty sources in a geospatial information system (GIS)-based seismic vulnerability assessment of buildings and then focuses on assessing the efficiency of Dempster rule of combination in the fusion of the information sources for the seismic vulnerability assessment. Tabriz, a historical and earthquake prone city in the north west of Iran was selected as the study area. The results verified that some inconsistencies among information sources exist which are important to be considered while proposing a method for the fusion of the information in order to obtain vulnerability assessments with less uncertainty. Based on the assessed building damage, the number of probable victims was estimated. The produced physical and social seismic vulnerability maps provide the required information for urban planners and administrators to reduce property and human losses through pre-earthquake mitigation and preparedness plans efficiently.

Seismic vulnerability assessment of urban buildings using the rough set theory and weighted linear combination

“…Inter comparisons between vulnerability maps of scenarios 4 and 6 indicate that the larger part of the study area (61% in scenario 4 and 52% in scenario 6) is in a very high and high class of vulnerability, while in scenario 4, proximity to the fault line is the prime contributor to damages. The moderate and high vulnerability classes (Delavar & Sadrykia 2020;Asadi et al 2019) have the highest share among their counterparts, with similar vulnerabilities also observed in both scenarios.…”

“…Earthquake is one of the natural disasters that causes severe physical, social and financial damages around the world every year Seismic vulnerability assessment is used to determine the likely effects of the hazards on human beings and property within a Seismic vulnerability assessment of urban buildings using the rough set theory and weighted linear combination particular area (Delavar and sadrykia 2020), Earthquakes are natural events that can also have long-term social and economic adverse impacts on societies. The vulnerability of cities and settlement areas to natural disasters such as earthquakes is to some extent a consequence of the role of human behaviors and is strongly related to the importance of planning systems in reducing the damaging effects of natural disasters ) Tehran, as the capital of Iran and the spiritual hub of the country, is highly susceptible to perils placed forth as the result of an earthquake.…”

Reviewing Seismic Vulnerability Dimensions: Current Trends and Methodological Challenges

“…The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach allows managing the subjectivity of the judgment associated with the weighting of the estimation of the vulnerability parameters through the construction of a comparison matrix, allowing the reduction of uncertainty and error that exist in the assessing process [20], [23], [24], [28], [29], [35], [36], [42], [43], [51].…”

Seismic Risk Analysis of Hospital Buildings: A Novel Interval-Valued Spherical Fuzzy ARAS

“…Akın Menekşe and Hatice Camgöz Akdağ / Journal of Risk Analysis and Crisis Response, 2022, 12 (2), [62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76] In this context, seismic risk level assessment of hospital buildings can be considered as a decision-making problem with inherent uncertainties such as vague expert evaluations, complicated qualitative and quantitative data, and ambiguous data relationships [3]. On the other hand, multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) models are widely used to rank alternatives from a pool of candidates based on a set of criteria.…”