Event-based assessment of seismic resilience in Mexican school buildings

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology to quantify a proposed parameter defined as expected annual seismic resilience, which takes into account all possible events that affect a site of interest by following the next steps: (1) definition of seismic hazard, (2) definition of the exposure database, (3) computation of structural and human vulnerability, (4) estimation of seismic risk, (5) definition of rehabilitation strategies and (6) estimation of repairing times and required resources in the proposed rehabilitation process. In this study, consequential physical losses and indirect cost are not considered in the resilience computation. The methodology is applied to a case study of existing school buildings, located in Mexico City given its important seismic activity. The results are presented in annual resilience maps that will allow to graphically observe the distribution of resilient structures and use this information to take better decisions in disaster prevention and response. From this research it was found that a large percentage of the studied school buildings do not achieve an acceptable annual resilience value according to the rating proposed, which is important, since the seismic design codes do not explicitly consider resilience concepts. However, with the information of expected annual seismic resilience values in Mexico City, obtained in this research, it is possible to identify those buildings that require immediate attention associated to the lower resilience values so that they may be taken into consideration in the decision-making process of disaster prevention and response.