Abstract
In this paper we describe a mathematical and numerical approach that combines physics-based simulated ground motion caused by earthquakes with fragility functions to model the structural damages induced to buildings. To simulate earthquake ground motion we use the discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method to solve a three-dimensional differential model at regional scale describing the propagation of seismic waves through the earth layers up to the surface. Selected intensity measures, retrieved from the synthetic time histories, are then employed as input for a vulnerability model based on fragility functions, in order to predict building damage scenarios at urban scale. The main features and effectiveness of the proposed numerical approach are tested on the Beijing metropolitan area.
Highlights
In the last few decades, losses induced by natural disasters have shown a dramatic increase on a worldwide scale
As already proposed by Villani et al [16], for each scenario the first statistical moments obtained for the relevant ground motion parameters from the population of synthetic signals can be computed, and used in the same way as one would use the median and the standard deviation of a classical Ground Motion Prediction Equations (GMPEs)
In this work we have introduced a simple and effective approach for seismic risk assessment which couples 3D physics-based scenarios (PBSs) and fragility functions in order to obtain risk estimate
Summary
In the last few decades, losses induced by natural disasters have shown a dramatic increase on a worldwide scale. In this paper we propose a comprehensive methodological approach for seismic risk assessment to yield physics-based damage scenarios, which employs, on the one hand, a rigorous numerical model for the prediction of near-source earthquake ground motion, and on the other, a suitable set of fragility functions for prescribed building typologies to quantify a probabilistic expected buildings damage. The three methodological pillars of this approach, i.e., the DGSE method for physics-based numerical simulation of earthquakes, the ground motion intensity measure I M and the fragility functions for the vulnerability model, are discussed in Sections 3, 4 and 5, respectively. At the second level (L2), based on Eq (2.1), seismic risk estimates are computed for a given earthquake scenario with prescribed magnitude Mw, i.e., P(DS ≥ ds|scenario), exploiting a statistically significant set of earthquake footprints, from which the probability distribution of ground motion can be computed. In the three following sections we will focus our attention on the three main ingredients of the methodological approach of Figure 1, i.e., a rigorous numerical model for the prediction of near-source earthquake ground motion (Section 3), a quantification of ground motion intensity measures (Section 4) and suitable fragility functions for prescribed building typologies (Section 5)
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