Seismic Reliability and Risk Assessment of Structures Based on Fragility Analysis – A Review

Abstract

A practical approach to explain the consequences of seismic hazards for society and decision making organisations is predicting the seismic risk. In this regard, the Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) is used extensively to investigate the probability of different seismic hazard levels at a geographical location. In addition, a further advancement is the introduction of Probabilistic Seismic Demand Analysis (PSDA) method because it provides a new insight into the Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) by evaluating the seismic risk specifically for a structure. To evaluate this seismic risk, the probability that the structural seismic demands may exceed a specific value is calculated under different ground motion intensities through a probabilistic approach. This approach is called the fragility analysis. This paper provides a review of recent research advancements in seismic fragility analysis. Different methods and related solutions which can be used for the fragility analysis are discussed. In addition, uncertainty quantification, as a significant feature in fragility analysis, is described and the important parameters which may influence the seismic fragility of a structure are explained. Finally, the authors offer their recommendations for improving the fragility analysis for further studies in the future.