Abstract
Abstract. The evaluation of the seismic fragility of buildings is one key task of earthquake safety and loss assessment. Many research reports and papers have been published over the past 4 decades that deal with the vulnerability of buildings to ground motion caused by earthquakes in China. We first scrutinized 69 papers and theses studying building damage for earthquakes that occurred in densely populated areas. They represent observations where macroseismic intensities have been determined according to the official Chinese Seismic Intensity Scale. From these many studies we derived the median fragility functions (dependent on intensity) for four damage limit states of the two most widely distributed building types: masonry and reinforced concrete. We also inspected 18 publications that provide analytical fragility functions (dependent on PGA, peak ground acceleration) for the same damage classes and building categories. Thus, a solid fragility database based on both intensity and PGA is established for seismicity-prone areas in mainland China. A comprehensive view of the problems posed by the evaluation of fragility for different building types is given. Based on the newly collected fragility database, we propose a new approach in deriving intensity–PGA relations by using fragility as the bridge, and reasonable intensity–PGA relations are developed. This novel approach may shed light on new thought in decreasing the scatter in traditional intensity–PGA relation development, i.e., by further classifying observed macroseismic intensities and instrumental ground motions based on differences in building seismic resistance capability.
Highlights
Field surveys after major disastrous earthquakes have shown that poor performance of buildings in earthquake-affected areas is the leading cause of human fatalities and economic losses (Yuan, 2008)
damage probability matrices (DPMs) give the proportions of buildings in each structural damage state (D1, D2, D3, D4, D5), and they can be used to derive the probability of exceeding each damage limit state P [LSi] (i = 1, 2, 3, 4), as illustrated in Eq (1): P [LSi] = 1 − P [Di] (i = 1) ; P [LSi] = P LSi−1 − P [Di], (i = 2. . .N ), (1)
Where P [LS|Sd] is the probability of being in or exceeding the damage limit state (LS) due to ground motion indicator Sd; SC|LS refers to the median value of the damage state indicator at which the building reaches the threshold of the damage state LS; βLS represents integrated uncertainties from seismic demand input, building capacity and model uncertainty, generally within the range of 0.6–0.8; [] is the normal cumulative probability distribution
Summary
Field surveys after major disastrous earthquakes have shown that poor performance of buildings in earthquake-affected areas is the leading cause of human fatalities and economic losses (Yuan, 2008). As pointed out by Billah and Alam (2015), empirical investigations are usually limited to particular sites or seismotectonic/geotechnical conditions with abundant seismic hazard and lack generality They usually refer to the macroseismic intensity, which is not an instrumental measure but is based on a subjective evaluation (Maio and Tsionis, 2015). The application of the existing fragility curves has been considered to be a challenging task, since different approaches and methodologies are spread across scientific journals, conference proceedings, technical reports and software manuals, hindering the creation of an integrated framework that could allow the visualization, acquisition and comparison between all the existing curves (Maio and Tsionis, 2015) In this regard, the first purpose of this study is to describe and examine available fragility curves, specially developed for Chinese buildings from 87 papers and theses using empirical and analytical methods. In Appendix and Code and data availability, access to supplementary documents mentioned in the text are provided
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