Modelling Cumulative Seismic Damage at the Urban Scale

Area of Science:

• Earthquake engineering
• Urban seismology
• Complex systems analysis

Background:

• Urban seismic risk assessment is crucial for mitigation and management.
• Existing methods often analyze earthquakes in isolation, neglecting cumulative effects.
• Understanding evolving building vulnerability under seismic sequences is key.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a methodology for simulating earthquake damage scenarios in urban areas, accounting for cumulative seismic sequence effects.
• To model the progressive accumulation of structural damage and evolving building vulnerability.
• To extend previous work by integrating updated calibration procedures and applying them to new case studies.

Main Methods:

• Modeling urban areas as collections of buildings with memory-dependent vulnerability evolution.
• Simulating the cumulative effects of entire seismic histories, not just individual events.
• Integrating instrumentally derived macroseismic intensity maps with observed building damage data.

Main Results:

• The methodology successfully reproduces observed damage patterns by considering the entire seismic sequence.
• New calibration procedures enhance the model's accuracy.
• Comparative analysis reveals the influence of seismic sequence characteristics and building stock on damage evolution.

Conclusions:

• The proposed methodology offers a robust tool for interpreting post-earthquake damage.
• It enhances seismic risk assessment and mitigation strategies by considering cumulative seismic effects.
• The study highlights the importance of a complex systems approach to urban seismic risk.