Seismic loss assessment for buildings with various-LOD BIM data

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Earthquake-induced loss of buildings is a fundamental concern for earthquake-resilient cities. The FEMA P-58 method is a state-of-the-art seismic loss assessment method for buildings. Nevertheless, because the FEMA P-58 method is a refined component-level loss assessment method, it requires highly detailed data as the input. Consequently, the knowledge of building details will affect the seismic loss assessment. In this study, a seismic loss assessment method for buildings combining building information modeling (BIM) with the FEMA P-58 method is proposed. The detailed building data are automatically obtained from the building information model in which the building components may have different levels of development (LODs). The determination of component type and the development of the component vulnerability function when the information is incomplete are proposed. The modeling rules and the information extraction from BIM through the Autodesk Revit application programming interface (API) are also proposed. Finally, to demonstrate the rationality of the proposed method, an office building that is available online is selected, and the seismic loss assessments with various-LOD BIM data are performed as case studies. The results show that, on the one hand, even if the available building information is limited, the proposed method can still produce an acceptable loss assessment; on the other hand, given more information, the accuracy of the assessment can be improved and the uncertainty can be reduced using the proposed method. Consequently, this study provides a useful reference for the automation of the refined seismic loss assessment of buildings.