Abstract
A uniform and comprehensive classification system, often referred to as taxonomy, is fundamental for the characterization of building portfolios for natural hazard risk assessment. A building taxonomy characterizes assets according to attributes that can influence the likelihood of damage due to the effects of natural hazards. Within the scope of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) initiative, a building taxonomy (GEM Building Taxonomy V2.0) was developed with the goal of classifying buildings according to their seismic vulnerability. This taxonomy contained 13 building attributes, including the main material of construction, lateral load-resisting system, date of construction and number of stories. Since its release in 2012, the taxonomy has been used by hundreds of experts working on exposure and risk modeling efforts. These applications allowed the identification of several limitations, which led to the improvement and expansion of this taxonomy into a new classification system compatible with multi-hazard risk assessment. This expanded taxonomy (named GED4ALL) includes more attributes and several details relevant for buildings exposed to natural hazards beyond earthquakes. GED4ALL has been applied in several international initiatives, enabling the identification of the most common building classes in the world, and facilitating compatibility between exposure models and databases of vulnerability and damage databases.
Highlights
Natural hazard risk assessment is critical for the development and implementation of disaster risk management measures
This article presents an overview of the relevant building classification systems that were reviewed to identify the required characteristics of a global uniform building taxonomy (GEM Building Taxonomy V2.0), and describes the testing of the taxonomy during the initial 5-year period that allowed the identification of its limitations and the expansion of the taxonomy to multi-hazard risk modeling applications (GED4ALL Building Taxonomy, GED stands for Global Exposure Database)
This review enabled the collection of hundreds of construction and architectural features, which had to be properly captured by the global taxonomy
Summary
Natural hazard risk assessment is critical for the development and implementation of disaster risk management measures. Most of the existing taxonomies are limited to a fixed list of building classes, and lack the required flexibility to characterize buildings and building classes at the locations of interest For these reasons, the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Foundation supported the development of a new global building taxonomy to characterize the building stock for seismic vulnerability and risk assessment purposes. This article presents an overview of the relevant building classification systems that were reviewed to identify the required characteristics of a global uniform building taxonomy (GEM Building Taxonomy V2.0), and describes the testing of the taxonomy during the initial 5-year period that allowed the identification of its limitations and the expansion of the taxonomy to multi-hazard risk modeling applications (GED4ALL Building Taxonomy, GED stands for Global Exposure Database). The attributes and associated options for this taxonomy are supported by an online glossary, and all of the information is available through a public repository on GitHub.
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