Towards the assessment and risk classification of existing building typologies using storey-loss functions

Abstract

Loss assessment due to earthquake events is becoming a common instrument in the seismic performance assessment of existing structures. For this purpose, different approaches exist with varying degrees of complexity and level of details. However, despite these developments in research, there remains a necessity to provide practitioners and decision-makers with simplified tools with which to conduct a building-specific loss assessment. A simplified alternative to computationally expensive loss assessment calculations are storey-loss functions (SLF). These reduce the computational effort by providing pre-calibrated loss functions describing the repair costs of a predefined building inventory of damageable components pertaining to a particular building typology of interest in a simplified manner. Direct economic losses can thus be estimated with respect to structural response parameters, such as storey drifts and peak floor accelerations. To this end, this paper presents a loss-assessment framework, employing SLFs and tailored for infilled reinforced concrete structures with damageable inventory particular of the construction practice in Southern Europe. A case study application is presented where findings of both, extensive and simplified analyses are presented and compared to illustrate the relative accuracy and applicability of the method.