Abstract
Efforts have been made in the past to enhance building exposure models on a regional scale with increasing spatial resolutions by integrating different data sources. This work follows a similar path and focuses on the downscaling of the existing SARA exposure model that was proposed for the residential building stock of the communes of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar (Chile). Although this model allowed great progress in harmonising building classes and characterising their differential physical vulnerabilities, it is now outdated, and in any case, it is spatially aggregated over large administrative units. Hence, to more accurately consider the impact of future earthquakes on these cities, it is necessary to employ more reliable exposure models. For such a purpose, we propose updating this existing model through a Bayesian approach by integrating ancillary data that has been made increasingly available from Volunteering Geo-Information (VGI) activities. Its spatial representation is also optimised in higher resolution aggregation units that avoid the inconvenience of having incomplete building-by-building footprints. A worst-case earthquake scenario is presented to calculate direct economic losses and highlight the degree of uncertainty imposed by exposure models in comparison with other parameters used to generate the seismic ground motions within a sensitivity analysis. This example study shows the great potential of using increasingly available VGI to update worldwide building exposure models as well as its importance in scenario-based seismic risk assessment.
Highlights
Exposure refers to the presence of people, livelihoods, species or ecosystems, services, infrastructure, or economic and social assets in places and settings that could be adversely affected by hazardous events [1]
It is important to consider that, due to the scope of using the exposure model as input for risk estimations, the complexity in the classification of buildings should not increase beyond the available set of fragility functions for generic typologies designed for specific areas [7,8]
We introduce some generalities of the building exposure model along with certain assumptions over the composition of the residential building stock of
Summary
Exposure refers to the presence of people, livelihoods, species or ecosystems, services, infrastructure, or economic and social assets in places and settings that could be adversely affected by hazardous events [1]. In the case of evaluating the physical vulnerability of a building stock exposed to earthquakes (i.e., forecasting the likely distributions of damages and direct financial losses), it is necessary, among other actions, to investigate the expected seismic ground motions as well as the composition of the building portfolio. The latter involves classifying buildings into mutually exclusive collective-exhaustive building classes to form the so-called building exposure model. It is important to consider that, due to the scope of using the exposure model as input for risk estimations, the complexity in the classification of buildings should not increase beyond the available set of fragility functions for generic typologies designed for specific areas [7,8]
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