Loss Estimation Module in the Second Generation Software QLARM

For almost-real time estimation of the ground shaking and losses after a major earthquake in the Euro-Mediterranean region the JRA-3 component of the EU Project entitled "Network of research Infrastructures for European Seismology, NERIES" foresees: 1. Finding of the most likely location of the source of the earthquake using regional seismotectonic data base, supported, if and when possible, by the estimation of fault rupture parameters from rapid inversion of data from on-line regional broadband stations. 2. Estimation of the spatial distribution of selected ground motion parameters at engineering bedrock through region specific ground motion attenuation relationships and/or actual physical simulation of ground motion. 3. Estimation of the spatial distribution of site-specific ground selected motion parameters using regional geology (or urban geotechnical information) database using appropriate amplification models. 4. Estimation of the losses and uncertainties at various orders of sophistication (buildings, casualties) Main objective of this study is to develop a methodology for real time estimation of losses after a major earthquake in the Euro-Mediterranean region. The multi-level methodology being developed together with researchers from Imperial College, NORSAR and ETH-Zurich is capable of incorporating regional variabilities and sources of uncertainty stemming from ground motion predictions, fault finiteness, site modifications, inventory of physical ane social elements subjected to earthquake hazard and the associated vulnerability relationships. Within the scope of this paper, results obtained from a pilot application of this methodology for the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake are presented and comparisons with the observed losses are made.

2007

The overall aim of Sub-Project 10 (Earthquake disaster scenario predictions and loss modelling for urban areas) has been to create a tool, based on state-of-the-art loss modelling software, to provide strong, quantified statements about the benefits of a range ...

Earthquake Spectra, 2009

We propose a method to calculate damage and human losses for cities in the developing world by averaging over an entire city, or its administrative districts. Bucharest, Romania, serves as an example. First, we modeled this city as located at a single coordinate point. We transformed the census information on building types, ages and height into EMS-98 vulnerability classes and distribute the population into them. We assumed a seismic load of MSK Intensity= 8 (M7.4 1977 Vrancea earthquake). Validating our model by comparison with casualties reported in 1977, we find differences of 20% to 30%. We reduced these errors to about 4%, by adjusting the distribution of building types into vulnerability classes, based on their performance in the 1977 earthquake. Calibrations of this type will be necessary for most developing countries. In a second step, we modeled Bucharest with six districts, in which the distribution of people into building types and the average soil conditions are known. This is our preferred model. We also calculated the soil properties that would be estimated from topography, if microzonation would not be available. The agreement was satisfactory. We propose this method to model important cities in earthquake prone areas of the developing world.

Portugal has its past marked by the occurrence of very destructive earthquakes. In the wellknown 1755 Lisbon earthquake, despite the various estimates proposed by the scientific community it is fair to assume that in Lisbon, more than 50% of the buildings were heavily damaged or destroyed and about 10% of the population perished. In the beginning of the last century, a moderate event of magnitude 6.6 Mw struck the village of Benavente, causing 46 fatalities and damaging more than 3000 dwellings. Besides this moderate seismicity, the Portuguese building stock in highly populated centres is characterized by a large fraction of masonry buildings, which typically have a higher seismic vulnerability. For these reasons, it is clear that a reliable and accurate platform for damage estimation based on deterministic earthquake scenarios is fundamental. This study provides an overview of the initial development of a damage estimation framework for Portugal, as well as a description of the components and input models required for the various calculations. This system has been established at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, and it will allow not only earthquake engineers and risk modelers to access damage information and launch scenario calculations, but also other experts and decision makers whose needs might have a particular purpose, such as emergency planning.

2016

One of the key objectives of the new EU civil protection mechanism is an enhanced understanding of risks the EU is facing. Developing a European perspective may create significant opportunities of successfully combining resources for the common objective of preventing and mitigating shared risks. Risk assessments and mapping represent the first step in these preventive efforts. The EU is facing an increasing number of natural disasters. Among them earthquakes are the second deadliest after extreme temperatures. A better-shared understanding of where seismic risk lies in the EU is useful to identify which regions are most at risk and where more detailed seismic risk assessments are needed. In that scope, seismic risk assessment models at a pan-European level have a great potential in obtaining an overview of the expected human and economic losses using a homogeneous quantitative approach and harmonized datasets. This study strives to demonstrate the feasibility of performing a seismic risk assessment at a pan-European level with an open access methodology and using open datasets available across the EU. It also aims at highlighting the challenges and needs in datasets and the information gaps for a consistent assessment of seismic risk at the pan-European level. Results are expressed as expected casualties and economic losses for a return period of 475-year. The study constitutes a ''proof of concept'' that can complement the information provided by Member States in their National Risk Assessments. Its main contribution lies in pooling open-access data from different sources in a homogeneous format, which could serve as baseline data for performing more in depth risk assessments in Europe.

2011

In this study, a country-by-country global building inventory and vulnerability index has been produced for 244 nations using individual country studies in order to make rapid loss estimation without regionalised assumptions. Over 1500 individual census forms and statistical yearbooks, in addition to demographic and health surveys, WHE-PAGER reports, United Nations data, individual government reports, energy building stock reports and other sources, were used on a country-by-country basis to create an urban and rural building inventory. Parameters in the residential building database include building type (houses, apartments etc.), wall and roof type (in terms of HAZUS classes), age of the building (8 classes of year ranges), number of floors, number of rooms, building quality, number of buildings, building cost data and household size (occupancy). A general building practice factor has been created using a combination of socio-economic indices like corruption, relative income and o...

Journal of Seismology, 2012

On March 4, 1977, an earthquake with a moment magnitude M w 7.4 at a hypocentral depth of 94 km hit the Vrancea region (Romania). In Bucharest alone, the earthquake caused severe damage to 33,000 buildings while 1,424 people were killed. Under the umbrella of the SAFER project, the city of Bucharest, being one of the larger European cities at risk, was chosen as a test bed for the estimation of damage and connected losses in case of a future large magnitude earthquake in the Vrancea area. For the conduct of these purely deterministic damage and loss computations, the open-source software SELENA is applied. In order to represent a large event in the Vrancea region, a set of deterministic scenarios were defined by combining ranges of focal parameters, i.e., magnitude, focal depth, and epicentral location. Ground motion values are computed by consideration of different ground motion prediction equations that are believed to represent earthquake attenuation effects in the region. Variations in damage and loss estimates are investigated through considering different sets of building vulnerability curves (provided by HAZUS-MH and various European authors) to characterize the damaging behavior of prevalent building typologies in the city of Bucharest.

Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 2008

Natural Hazards, 2001

The abodes in Costa Rica have almost the same vulnerability as the old civil houses in China, which represent the vulnerability in worst cases. On the other hand, the high quality buildings in Middle East have the same vulnerability as the reinforced concrete buildings in China due to employing the state-of-art-design and construction techniques, which represent the vulnerability of the best cases. The macroeconomic vulnerability is defined as the ratio of physical economic loss caused by earthquake to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) within a given area. Since the total macroscopic loss is the sum of losses of different types of buildings and facilities, the macroeconomic vulnerability must be greater than that of best cases while less than that of worst cases. In the present paper, the implications of macroeconomic vulnerability to earthquake loss estimate are discussed.

The paper presents the methodology and software for developing seismic scenarios in two Mediterranean cities, Grevena (Greece) and Düzce (Turkey) that were heavily hit by strong earthquakes during the last decade. After compiling the building inventory in each city, fragility curves were derived using the hybrid approach developed the authors, and a series of seismic scenarios were developed based on city-specific microzonation studies. Both the methodology and the results obtained in terms of loss estimates, required restoration times and the associated costs are presented in a GIS environment. The results obtained, but, more so, the methodology and tools developed, contribute towards the enhancement of seismic safety in the Mediterranean area, while they are also useful for other earthquake-prone areas.

Proceedings of the VII European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences and Engineering (ECCOMAS Congress 2016), 2016

Disaster risk reduction has become a global urgent need. Similarly to other natural hazards, earthquakes may cause significant damages on a large scale. In Europe, seismic events mainly affect historical city centers, which are characterized by dense urban structure, usually constituted by ancient masonry and pre-code R.C. buildings, often in aggregate sequence. Historical city centers are very much part of the European cultural heritage and their preservation is considered a strategic issue for the EC due to their tangible and intangible values. Furthermore, it is an undisputable fact that natural disasters may have severe negative short-term economic impacts on the built environment and adverse longer-term consequences for economic growth and development. For this reason, the development of an efficient digital tool for urban seismic risk assessment and resilience enhancement becomes essential. With this aim, an original numerical procedure is proposed in this paper, based on multidisciplinary concepts combined in an innovative way. First of all, the concept of Limit States for the Minimum Urban Structure is introduced and described by means of simple mechanically based models. Then, elliptically distributed vulnerability indices are worked out by considering multidirectional seismic hazard, and 2D seismic risk assessment computation is performed. The results are implemented within the GIS software, where they are easily shown and discussed thanks to the graphical mapping tool. The proposed approach allows the definition and evaluation of a global intervention plan for resilience enhancement at the urban scale. Finally the proposed numerical procedure is applied for validation to the Italian citycenter of Concordia Sulla Secchia (Italy), damaged by the 2012 Pianura Padana Earthquake (PPE). The predicted damage scenarios are compared with the actual post-seismic damage scenarios in order to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed evaluation procedure.

Natural Hazards, 2014

Pakistan is an earthquake-prone region due to its tectonic setting resulting in high hazard with moderate-to-strong ground motions and vulnerability of structures and infrastructures, leading to the loss of lives and livelihood, property damage and economic losses. Earthquake-related disaster in Pakistan is a regular and serious threat to the community; however, the country lack tools for earthquake risk reduction through early warning (preearthquake planning), rapid response (prompt response at locations of high risk) and prefinancing earthquake risk (property insurance against disaster). This paper presents models for physical damageability assessment and socioeconomic loss estimation of structures in Pakistan for earthquake-induced ground motions, derived using state-of-the-art earthquake loss estimation methodologies. The methodologies are being calibrated with the site-specific materials and structures response, whereas the derived models are tested and validated against recent observed earthquakes in the region. The models can be used to develop damage scenario for earthquakes (assess damaged and collapsed structures, casualties and homeless) and estimate economic losses, i.e., cost of repair and reconstruction (for a single earthquake event as well as all possible earthquakes). The models can provide help on policy-and decision-making toward earthquake risk mitigation and disaster risk reduction in Pakistan.

This paper aims at presenting and comparing different models used to assess earthquake vulnerability and associated risk for buildings in Switzerland. 1 B. Duvernay, Federal Office for Water and Geology, Switzerland, [email protected] 2 Dr. O. Lateltin, Federal Office for Water and Geology, Switzerland, [email protected]

Earthquake Spectra, 2010

We develop a global database of building inventories using taxonomy of global building types for use in near-real-time post-earthquake loss estimation and pre-earthquake risk analysis, for the U.S. Geological Survey's Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) program. The database is available for public use, subject to peer review, scrutiny, and open enhancement. On a country-by-country level, it contains estimates of the distribution of building types categorized by material, lateral force resisting system, and occupancy type (residential or nonresidential, urban or rural). The database draws on and harmonizes numerous sources: (1) UN statistics, (2) UN Habitat's demographic and health survey (DHS) database, (3) national housing censuses, (4) the World Housing Encyclopedia and (5) other literature.

2017

Italian territory is particularly sensitive to seismic actions. The Amatrice earthquake on August 24th 2016 confirmed this aspect. Such an event, nothing but extraordinary, has been able to cause huge and tragic damages. The direct knowledge of building features is the only prior measure to face seismic events. In order to get a realistic scenario of the urban damage distribution, the determination of useful seismic vulnerability assessment tools at urban scale becomes a priority. The widespread application of seismic vulnerability assessment sheets and the related data transformation into urban damage distribution plans is exactly what municipalities need. Main advantages are both in the chance of prior knowing the most affected areas to focus on for retrofitting interventions and in the possibility of organizing optimal emergency plans. In European framework, in the last decade, the Risk-UE project has played an important role. The Risk-UE project has proposed two methods for vuln...