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.

Performance-based probabilistic framework for seismic risk, resilience, and sustainability assessment of reinforced concrete structures

“…A lognormal cumulative distribution function is used to fit the probability of collapse under a given EDP (Sfahani et al, 2015). Fragility curves for immediate occupancy (IO), life safety (LS), and collapse prevention (CP) can also be generated in a similar fashion as follows…”

A Novel MDP Based Decision Support Framework to Restore Earthquake Damaged Distribution Systems

“…Fragility curves are used to represent the seismic risk exposure based on the risk and safety assessment of structural components. These curves show the probability of exceeding a structural performance level with respect to increasing earthquake intensity level [10]. There have been an increasing number of studies in the past two decades that focus on the use of fragility curves for estimating seismic damage levels after natural hazards [11] - [14].…”

On the Seismic Design of Structures with Tilting Located within a Seismic Region

“…There are several methods in the literature to estimate the reliability of structures. For example: (a) the semi-probabilistic [24], (b) first order and second moments (FOSM) [25][26][27], (c) load and resistance factors design (LRFD) format [28,29], (d) those based on seismic hazard or risk analysis [30][31][32][33][34], and (e) those based on optimization [35][36][37][38]. In the present study, the structural reliability is evaluated by means of seismic hazard analysis.…”