Building damage scenarios based on exploitation of Housner intensity derived from finite faults ground motion simulations

Abstract

In this paper earthquake damage scenarios for residential buildings (about 4200 units) in Potenza (Southern Italy) have been estimated adopting a novel probabilistic approach that involves complex source models, site effects, building vulnerability assessment and damage estimation through Damage Probability Matrices. Several causative faults of single seismic events, with magnitude up to 7, are known to be close to the town. A seismic hazard approach based on finite faults ground motion simulation techniques has been used to identify the sources producing the maximum expected ground motion at Potenza and to generate a set of ground motion time histories to be adopted for building damage scenarios. Additionally, site effects, evaluated in a previouswork through amplification factors of Housner intensity, have been combined with the bedrock values provided by hazard assessment. Furthermore, a new relationship between Housner and EMS-98 macroseismic intensity has been developed. This relationship has been used to convert the probability mass functions of Housner intensity obtained from synthetic seismograms amplified by the site effects coefficients into probability mass function of EMS-98 intensity. Finally, the Damage Probability Matrices have been applied to estimate the damage levels of the residential buildings located in the urban area of Potenza. The proposed methodology returns the full probabilistic distribution of expected damage, thus avoiding average damage index or uncertainties expressed in term of dispersion indexes

On the ability of Moho reflections to affect the ground motion in northeastern Italy: a case study of the 2012 Emilia seismic sequence

“…SAs can be related to the MCS macroseismic intensity (I MCS ) using the available period dependent regression (Faenza and Michelini 2011) while SI has been evaluated since it has been recently considered a very effective parameter to correlate the severity of seismic events with building structural damage (Pergalani et al 1999;Masi et al 2010;Chiauzzi et al 2012). For SI both I MCS and European Macroseismic Scale-EMS98 intensity (I EMS , Grünthal 1998) are evaluated.…”

“…In addition, we use the regressions between I MCS and SI (Koliopoulos et al 1998) and I EMS and SI (Chiauzzi et al 2012). The linear trend between Mw and SI is shown in Fig.…”

Novel Models and Tools to Evaluate the Economic Feasibility of Retrofitting Intervention

“…It provides information about the expected economic losses refer to all possible arriving earthquakes [3]. Generally, a seismic economic losses model could be referred to different kind of losses (direct and indirect).…”

“…In this application, the EMS-98 intensity [14] has been considered as reference intensity. In this way, based on relationship between European macro-seismic scale EMS-98 and Housner intensity (IH) proposed in [3] the equivalence between IH and EMS-98 has been defined.…”

“…This issue plays a fundamental role in seismic risk mitigation strategies and it should be strongly considered in all planning activities. The available studies are generally based on buildings stock and the possible seismic occurrence of earthquakes [1], [2], [3]. The main problem is the strong disproportion between the available public economic resources and the buildings that require retrofitting interventions.…”