Vulnerability Assessment of Multi-Hazard Exposed Building Types - An Ems-98 Based Empirical-Statistical Methodology

Abstract eng:
The European Macroseismic Scale EMS-98 provides robust tools for the damage classification and evaluation of the vulnerability of buildings under earthquake action. The vulnerability table of the EMS-98 is an attempt to categorize the strength of structures in a manageable and simple way, taking into account both, building type or structural system and other vulnerability affecting factors (e.g. quality of workmanship, state of disrepair, irregularities of shape, layout, design “defects”). Based on the engineering experience from real observed damage cases characteristic vulnerability classes are defined for different building types; whereas most likely, still probable and exceptional cases have to be considered The basic methodology of the EMS-98 is also transferable to other natural hazards such as flood, tsunami and storm. This allows a unified approach for the consideration of the building vulnerability in the sense of a multi-hazard approach. For the transfer of this concept to other natural hazards and also in the context of development of the "International Macroseismic Scale (IMS)" a (still missing) mathematically supported approach is required to classify the individual building types into their characteristic vulnerability classes as well as to define the range of scatter of assignments for the individual building types provided by empirical-statistical relationships. At international level, regional variations of building types are known; their vulnerability, however, has not been evaluated in a systematic manner. This paper presents the refinement of a methodology which allows the specification of the most likely vulnerability classes for the different building types on the basis of damage data and existing observations. As an extension to former studies the "probable range of scatter" and the ranges for the "exceptional cases" are determined by applying beta distributions. The developed methodology enables the assignment of previously unclassified building types into the system of vulnerability classes with the related range of scatter. The basic elements of the procedure are stepwise methodically developed. Practical application is demonstrated for the natural hazards earthquake and tsunami. The differentiation of individual building types into vulnerability classes (in form of vulnerability tables) is presented for both natural hazards in a comparative way.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket