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Evaluation of Existing Fragility Curves

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SYNER-G: Typology Definition and Fragility Functions for Physical Elements at Seismic Risk

Part of the book series: Geotechnical, Geological and Earthquake Engineering ((GGEE,volume 27))

Abstract

There is a wealth of existing fragility curves for buildings and infrastructure. The main challenge in using these curves for future applications is how to identify and, if necessary, combine suitable fragility curves from a pool of curves with different characteristics and, often unknown, reliability. The present chapter aims to address this challenge by developing a procedure which identifies suitable fragility curves by firstly assessing their representativeness to the needs of the future application and then assessing the reliability of the most relevant relationships. The latter is based on a novel procedure which involves the assessment of the most significant factors affecting the robustness and quality for each fragility assessment methodology, also presented here. In addition, a decision-tree approach is adopted in order to combine more than one suitable fragility curves. The proposed selection and combination procedures are illustrated here with a simple case study which appraises the impact of different weighting schemes and highlights the importance of a deep understanding of the existing fragility curves and their limitations.

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Acknowledgments

The Global Earthquake Model is acknowledged for its support of Dr. Ioanna Ioannou and Dr. Abdelghani Meslem in the research work that underpins this Chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, London, UK

    Tiziana Rossetto, Dina D’Ayala, Ioanna Ioannou & Abdelghani Meslem

Authors
  1. Tiziana Rossetto
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  2. Dina D’Ayala
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  3. Ioanna Ioannou
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  4. Abdelghani Meslem
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tiziana Rossetto .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece

    K. Pitilakis

  2. European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering (EUCENTRE), Pavia, Italy

    H. Crowley

  3. Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), Oslo, Norway

    A.M. Kaynia

Appendix

Appendix

Table A.1 Rating system of the Relevance of existing fragility curves
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Table A.2 Rating scheme of the Overall Quality of existing analytical fragility curves
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Table A.3 Rating scheme of the Overall Quality of existing empirical fragility curves
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Rossetto, T., D’Ayala, D., Ioannou, I., Meslem, A. (2014). Evaluation of Existing Fragility Curves. In: Pitilakis, K., Crowley, H., Kaynia, A. (eds) SYNER-G: Typology Definition and Fragility Functions for Physical Elements at Seismic Risk. Geotechnical, Geological and Earthquake Engineering, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7872-6_3

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