Restored quality of life-based approach (REQUALIFE) for urban seismic resilience assessment: Quantitative method

Abstract

With rapid urbanization, today's cities are increasingly vulnerable to unpredictable and catastrophic environmental hazards such as earthquakes. A quantitative approach for seismic resilience assessment at the urban scale is still a challenging task because of the extreme complexity of urban systems. This study proposes a Restored Quality of Life-based Approach to evaluate urban seismic resilience. First, extensive literature is reviewed and analyzed to determine the mathematical definition of urban seismic resilience. Performance-based methods are selected, and urban seismic resilience is calculated by comparing desired city performance with actual city performance after an earthquake. Second, the concept of post-disaster quality of life is applied to indicate the city performance. A set of indicators is constructed preliminarily based on literature to measure the quality of life and is then validated by a Delphi survey. Finally, a framework is recommended to apply the proposed approach. The Restored Quality of Life-based Approach offers an effective tool for evaluating and improving the urban seismic resilience of a city and lays a theoretical and methodological foundation for better insights into and analysis of the urban seismic resilience in the future.