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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an integrative review of the literature to understand the underlying risks of tectonic plate movements, earthquakes and possible earth tremors on Bangladesh as a country filled with waterways. Design/methodology/approach This study presents a review of seismic activities to present an overview of the active tectonic architecture of the region and its seismic potential with past consequence in Bangladesh region and its immediate surroundings. For the purpose of this review, peer-reviewed journals and electronic databases are the main sources for identifying studies, along with conference proceedings from the similar events and networks. Findings Review reveals that Bangladesh sits on three tectonic plates atop the world’s largest river delta and has blind faults, shallow faults and high amplified liquefiable zones. It has experienced few devastating earthquakes but most of the records are not documented and also a lack of proper seismic equipment could not record all the events. Also Bangladesh is ill prepared to tackle the aftermath of any strong earthquake and if an earthquake with 7 Mw or greater magnitude occurred, it would leave Bangladesh blighted by a catastrophic disaster with significant destruction of infrastructure, fire outbreaks resulting from breakdown of gas piping systems, fire from collapsed electrical lines and disruption of water connections both in urban and rural centres with greater impact on industrial cities that may not have adhered to standard building codes. Originality/value This paper outlined the necessity of an earthquake hazard catalogue, also preparation in sense of seismic risk mitigation and influence of decision-makers, policy institutes and professionals in ensuring infrastructure development and the building code provides for a safe environment and resilient buildings that can reduce or eliminate the risks.

Purpose Increasing awareness of the society and complying with design requirements of building codes for seismic safety of structures and inhabitants during severe earthquakes are the primary purpose of seismic analysis. This study aims to present the variability in seismic fragility functions for frames of different heights for the most vulnerable condition of structure using nonlinear time history analysis. Design/methodology/approach A total of 4, 8 and 20 stories reinforced concrete (RC) moment-resisting two-dimensional frames are considered for this study. Ground motions (GM) are selected as per the conditional mean spectrum and these are conditioned on a target spectral acceleration at the concern time period. RC frames are designed and detailed as per Indian standards. A concentrated plasticity approach is adopted for non-linear analytical modeling of the RC frames. Deterministic capacity limit states in terms of maximum inter-story drift ratio are considered for different damage states. Fragility functions have been derived following a lognormal distribution from incremental dynamic analysis curves. Finally, the maximum likelihood estimation of the response is obtained for fitting curves with observed fragility. Findings The fragility functions of the three structures reflect that under critical or extreme conditions of GM the taller buildings have higher fragility than the shorter buildings for each level of limit states even though both are designed to meet their code-level design forces. Research limitations/implications The study is conducted on the extreme scenario of GM conditioned on the fundamental time period of each building, whereas comparison can be developed by selecting various methodologies of GM set. The probabilistic capacity model can be developed for future studies to check the fragility variation with deterministic and probabilistic capacity. Originality/value The investigation endeavors to present a comprehensive fragility assessment framework by analytical method. The outcome will be useful in the development of a disaster management strategy for new or old buildings and the response of seismic force with a variation of the building’s height. The findings will also be useful for updating the earthquake-resistant building codes for the new building construction in a similar context.

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