A Novel Approach to Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Existing Residential Reinforced Concrete Buildings Stock: A Case Study for Bingöl, Turkey

Investigations for the estimation of the influence of possible earthquakes on the existing building stock are of great importance for the precautions to be taken and the strategies to be developed in order to reveal the earthquake risk and reduce the damages that may occur. In particular, Bingöl province, located at the intersection of two main faults, such as the North Anatolian Fault Zone and the East Anatolian Fault Zone, is a region with a high earthquake potential. In this paper, nonlinear time history analyzes were applied to the existing reinforced concrete residental building stock of Bingöl province, where the earthquake potential is high, and fragility curves were obtained. Seismic assessment was carried out with street screening methods, which provide advantages in terms of both time and economy, and 1261 buildings were classified. After the classification, the remaining 32 residential reinforced concrete buildings were modeled in 3D and nonlinear analyzes were performed with real earthquake records. Generally, fragility curves are generated for similar building types in a particular region in vulnerability studies. In this study, taking into account plastic hinges of structural elements in the local fragility curves developed for Bingöl province differs in terms of obtaining fragility curves. Despite the renewal of the construction in Bingöl after the past major earthquakes, the irregularities in the buildings revealed the necessity of carrying out similar seismic vulnerability assessment studies. In addition, the obtained 5 different fragility curves allowed the Bingöl province to be evaluated in terms of seismicity for possible earthquakes to occur in the future.