Seismic Vulnerability Assessment Using Spherical Fuzzy ARAS

Higher education buildings are very important lifelines and can be very vulnerable if located in a region of high seismic hazard, and estimating the performance and expected damage of these buildings from future earthquakes is very crucial to reduce the levels of physical damage and interruption of education, research, and human resource training activities. Rapid and economical pre-assessment of the sensitivity of these buildings will shed light to higher education managements for appropriate retrofitting and reconstruction planning. However, a seismic vulnerability assessment involves complex qualitative criteria set and there is a need for a model that can present the evaluations of experts in a quantitative, systematic and measurable form while reflecting the uncertain and fuzzy nature of the process to the model. In this paper, a novel multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) decision support model is developed by extending Additive Ratio ASsessment (ARAS) to spherical fuzzy ARAS. The applicability of the model is illustrated through a numerical example for seismic vulnerability assessment of higher education institution buildings and three decision-makers (DMs) evaluate four buildings with respect to eight criteria from the literature. Sensitivity and comparative analysis, practical implications, limitations and future research avenue are also given within the study.