Earthquake loss assessment of precast RC industrial structures in Tuscany (Italy)

Abstract

A seismic loss assessment for structural, non-structural, contents and business interruption is presented for precast reinforced concrete industrial buildings located in Italy. The correlation that exists between the performances of such spatially distributed buildings (i.e. spatial correlation) given a seismic event should be considered when estimating losses at a local or regional level. Loss assessment is thus performed herein using the OpenQuake-engine, an open-source tool capable of including the spatial correlation of ground-motion residuals and uncertainty in building vulnerability. The annual probability of structural collapse is employed as an initial risk measure, in which each industrial facility is considered as an individual asset. Then the economic loss for 300 buildings in the province of Arezzo is computed using a probabilistic event-based risk approach and presented in terms of annual average losses and losses at given annual rates of exceedance. The impact of the losses due to business interruption is also explored, and the extent of customer base is used as a prioritization metric for risk mitigation. It is observed that risk reduction should be applied as a priority in the facilities that are compromising the current level of acceptable risk, and the results show that business interruption has a significant contribution for economic losses, whose repercussions go beyond the regional level. Although this application is confined to the province of Arezzo, the same methodology can be used in other regions in Italy with similar building stock.