Development of the CanRisk earthquake injury model

Abstract

CanRisk is a tool to assess the seismic vulnerability of buildings in Canada. CanRisk models that support the individual evaluation of reinforced concrete, masonry, steel, and timber-frame buildings have been recently developed. Herein, a new model for CanRisk is presented that quantifies an individual’s risk of earthquake injury, the number of injuries, and provides an injury profile of life-threatening injuries at the building scale. The model uses an evidence-based and multi-disciplinary approach to identifying risk factors that affect an individual’s likelihood of being injured in an earthquake. The model implements fuzzy synthetic evaluation to quantify seismic risk, combines Hazus methodology with methodology presented herein to estimate number of injuries, and uses a decision matrix to generate the injury profiles. The model is designed to include the ability to test the benefits of mitigation strategies such as the retrofit of operational and functional components and the implementation of earthquake safety campaigns.