Séminaire : Dimitris Pitilakis

Urban-scale seismic risk assessment

This work introduces, develops, compares, and applies two holistic, modular methods to include site amplification (SA) and soil-structure interaction (SSI) effects in urban-scale earthquake risk assessment. We propose two methods: a detailed and simplified structural modeling approach. SSI and SA effects are explicitly considered in both approaches’ fragility and vulnerability calculation. A significant time and effort cost accompanies the detailed method, while it more elaborately captures the structural response. The simplified modeling approach facilitates the analysis procedures but neglects certain aspects of the more complex nonlinear dynamic structural behavior. We applied the two approaches to the risk assessment of a block of buildings in Thessaloniki, Greece, and demonstrated each method’s advantages and disadvantages. Our main results suggest that SA effects increase fragility more than SSI. A detailed modeling approach may lead to a more reliable estimate of the expected losses, compromised by the significantly higher modeling and computational effort.