Earthquake risk assessment of buildings accounting for human evacuation

Abstract

Summary A primary goal of earthquake engineering is to protect society from the possible negative consequences of future earthquakes. Conventionally, this goal has been achieved indirectly by reducing seismic damage of the built environment through better building codes, or more comprehensibly, by minimizing seismic risk. However, the effect that building damage has on occupants is not explicitly taken into account while designing infrastructure. Consequently, this paper introduces a conceptual framework and numerical algorithm to assess earthquake risk on building occupants during seismic events, considering the evacuation process of the structure. The framework combines probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, inelastic structural response analysis and damage assessment, and couples these results with the response of evacuating agents. The results are cast as probability distributions of variables that measure the overall performance of the system (e.g., evacuation times, number of injured people, and repair costs) for specific time windows. As a testbed, the framework was applied to the response of a reinforced concrete frame building that exemplifies the use of all steps of the methodology. The results suggest that this seismic risk evaluation framework of structural systems that combine the response of a physical model with human agents can be extended to a wide variety of other situations, including the assessment of mitigation actions in communities and people to improve their earthquake resilience. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ex-ante online risk assessment for building emergency evacuation through multimedia data

“…In fact, over 22 thousand articles report emerging applications, discussions, and methodologies related to this topic within the last 5 years[7,8]. Most studies have focused on probabilistic risk models, simulations [9], evacuation drills [10], and socio-psychological aspects of documented disasters [11]. However, the design of online risk assessment systems has been scarcely addressed.…”

Evacuation-Based Design of Urban Regions for Earthquake Disaster

“…Another important parameter regarded in the design of cities is the ability to evacuate the inhabitants in case of natural disasters. Among studies performed in this relation, studies performed by [15,17,20,25] can be pointed out. Designing a city is regarded in this study with particular consideration of emergency management and efficient evacuation of people.…”

Risk estimation of the disaster waste generated by both ground motion and tsunami due to the anticipated Nankai Trough earthquake

“…Hence, since disaster waste can hinder recovery activities and cause a significant delay in reconstruction, the recovery of disaster debris is a critical issue for not only ensuring a livable environment in affected regions but also enhancing resilience. 1,[10][11][12] Accurately estimating the amount of disaster waste is essential in planning management strategies. [13][14][15][16][17][18] Methods for estimating the amount of disaster waste have been investigated based on damage data collected from past natural disasters.…”