Empirical vulnerability modeling considering geospatial ground motion variability

The earthquake risk to a group of structures can be effectively managed only if accurate fragility models are available. Fragility models are utilized for estimating the likelihoods of specific damage levels being exceeded given that considered structures are subjected to specific ground motion intensity levels. A new approach is presented here for establishing fragility models for building groups based on observed damage distributions. The novelty of the proposed method is the explicit consideration of the geospatial ground motion variability in the analysis. The statistical correlation structure in between the peak motion intensities at the considered damage observation sites are explicitly modeled in the proposed framework. As an example application of the proposed method, fragility models for multi-story reinforced concrete moment resisting frame buildings are presented. In this application, the damage observations made after November 17^th , 1999 M7.2 Duzce (Turkey) earthquake are considered.The results from the example application approve the capabilities of the method in terms of effectively establishing fragility models.