Earthquake Safety Assessment of Buildings Through Rapid Visual Screening

Abstract

Earthquake is among the most devastating natural disasters causing severe economic, environmental, and social destruction. Earthquake safety assessment and building hazard monitoring can highly contribute to urban sustainable development through identification and insight into optimum materials and structures. While the vulnerability of structures mainly depends on the structural resistance, the safety assessment of buildings can be highly challenging. In this paper, we consider Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) method which is a qualitative procedure for estimating structural scores for buildings suitable for medium- to high-seismic cases. This paper presents an overview of the common RVS methods, i.e., FEMA P-154, IITK-GGSDMA, and EMPI. To examine the accuracy and validation, a practical comparison is performed between their assessment and observed damage of reinforced concrete buildings from a street survey in the Bingöl region, Turkey, after the 11 May 2003 earthquake. The results demonstrate that the application of RVS methods for preliminary damage estimation is a vital tool. Furthermore, the comparative analysis showed that FEMA P-154 creates an assessment that overestimates damage states and is not economically viable while EMPI and IITK-GGSDMA provide for more accurate and practical estimation, respectively.

Telemedicine Assessment for the Mental Health of Rural Residents Based on the Safety Degree of Housing in Seismically Active Regions

“…The interviewers with architectural backgrounds also scored the degree of housing safety, which can improve the validity of the questionnaire combined with the scores of other questions. Finally, many existing studies evaluated the state of housing safety using factors such as the building type, structural forms, degree of wall tilt, and degree of wall cracks ( 41 ). These objective factors have been widely applied to housing safety assessments.…”