Estimation of Potential Seismic Damage in Urban Areas

Large earthquakes are known to have significant damage potential in urban regions. Recently all over the world, efforts are made toward reduction of future probable damages. The first step in damage mitigation is the estimation of expected damage levels in buildings that are subjected to earthquakes with different intensities. Due to the inherent uncertainties involved in the analyses, estimation of seismic damage rates must be handled within a probabilistic framework. To assess the damage rates under different shaking levels, “seismic damage” needs to be quantified and measured in a standard manner. The most common approach to quantify seismic damage rates is to perform fragility analyses. Fragility is defined as the probability of a system reaching a limit state as a function of seismic intensity levels..

Providing Guidance for Evacuation During Emergency based on a Real-time Damage and Vulnerability Assessment of Facilities

Following a disaster or an emergency situation (e.g., earthquake,) in a facility, it is crucial for emergency response teams to rapidly access navigation information of the facility, its contents and the final status of the facility (e.g., damages and vulnerable locations). However, in the current practice, accessing these information items is time-consuming and the accessed information is incomplete, since there are multiple sources of information that are mostly disorganized. This study proposes a Building Information Model (BIM) based approach integrated with sensors to provide the damage and vulnerability information of the facility for efficient response and for safe evacuation of the facility. The proposed framework integrates navigation algorithms, a vulnerability assessment approach and the status information obtained from various sensors that are strategically deployed inside the facility. This framework will be used for guiding the occupants and rescue teams through safe locations in a facility during evacuation

Post-disaster Sensor-based Condition Assessment of Buildings to Develop Evacuation Strategies

This study focuses on sensor-based, real-time condition assessment of buildings during and after multi-hazard emergencies and it is based on the idea that; the spatial distribution of damage in a building can be monitored by the help of different types of sensors. The number and locations of these sensors are arranged in such a way that it becomes possible to picture the current condition of the building. Sensors utilized in this study can be listed as accelerometer, ultrasonic range finder, gyroscope, closed cable circuit and video camera. The first step of the research is to decide on the number and location of different sensors that will be deployed inside the building. The next step is to correlate the readings of each type of sensor with the observed damage caused by the disaster. This is achieved by conducting real-time experiments on a scaled corridor model, equipped with sensors. Finally, sensor fusion is carried out, and obtained sensor readings are gathered to provide overall information about the current condition of the building. A decision tree approach is developed, which predicts the penalty scores for blockage in certain regions of the building. By conducting experiments, the developed decision tree approach is validated. Consequently, it is concluded that the obtained information can be used as an input for shortest path algorithms that calculate safe and rapid evacuation paths for the victims in damaged buildings

Bina İçi Yönlendirme Sistemlerinde Kullanılan En Kısa Yol Algoritmalarının Afet ve Acil Durum Yönetimi Açısından Değerlendirilmesi

Mimari açıdan karmaşık ve içinde fazla sayıda insanın bulunacağı şekilde tasarlanan ofis veya eğitim binaları gibi yapılarda, herhangi bir doğal afette ve/veya acil durumda büyük ölçekte can kayıpları ve yaralanmalar yaşanabilmektedir. Ayrıca, bir afet/acil durum sonrasında değişen bina koşulları ardışık afetleri ve/veya tehlikeleri (örneğin deprem sonrası çıkan yangınlar) tetikleyebilmektedir. Etkin bir bina içi yönlendirme sistemi, afetlerde/acil durumlarda yaşanan problemleri en aza indirgeyerek can kayıplarını azaltmada kritik bir öneme sahiptir. Bina içi yönlendirmede amaç, bina içersinde bulunan kişilerin, afetlerden/acil durumlardan ve tetiklenebilecek ardışık tehlikelerden en az etkilenecek şekilde en kısa yoldan güvenli bölgelere yönlendirilmeleridir. Bu amaçla bina içi yönlendirme sistemlerinde en kısa yol (EKY) algoritmaları kullanılmaktadır. Literatürde, araştırmacıların yönlendirme sistemlerini oluştururken hangi EKY algoritmasını tercih etmeleri gerektiği yönünde bir boşluk bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışma bulgularının, bina içi yönlendirme sistemi geliştirme çalışmalarında en uygun algoritmanın seçimine kılavuzluk etmesi hedeflenmektedir. Literatürdeki bina içi yönlendirme çalışmaları araştırılarak en sık kullanılan EKY algoritmalarının afet sonrası oluşan yeni yapı koşullarında kısa yol belirlemedeki performansları incelenmiştir. Yönlendirme sistemlerinde kullanılacak olan EKY algoritmalarının sağlamaları gereken özellikler belirlenen altı adet ölçüt ışığında afet/acil durum yönetimi bakış açısıyla kıyaslaması yapılmıştır. Ayrıca, afetlerde/acil durumlarda kullanılabilecek bina içi yönlendirme sistemlerinden beklenenleri en uygun şekilde sağlayan EKY algoritması üzerine tartışma ve öneriler sunulmuştur

Representation of Topological Building Information for Creating Shortest Evacuation Paths During Building Emergencies

In case of a disaster or an emergency (e.g., earthquake) in a facility, fast evacuation of the occupants is crucial. But the complex indoor environments of buildings (e.g., tall and large commercial buildings) negatively affect evacuation.Moreover, buildings are often threatened by multi-hazard situations, such as post earthquake induced hazards, enforcing the responders and occupants to deal with more than one emergency at a time. To perform effective evacuation, response teams require some information about the damaged building (e.g., building status and contents). In the current practice it is time-consuming to access this information since it is collected at the disaster area. Also, the collected information is incomplete, unstructured and inadequate for an effective indoor navigation. Thus, the required building information is needed to be represented and stored and made available for indoor navigation during emergency. The study explained in this paper proposes an approach which utilizes Building Information Model (BIM) combined with graph theory principles and sensor information to create evacuation paths for the use of responders and occupants during emergency. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) based building models are used and the graph theory elements (e.g., nodes, edges) are defined to generate a graph network model that represents the topological map of the building. This model is integrated with a shortest path algorithm to create safe and short evacuation paths. This paper specifically provides the details on representation of graph theory elements using the building-related information obtained in IFC format, and explains the method used for creating shortest paths

Assessment of the seismic vulnerability of an unreinforced masonry structure based on discrete-macro dynamic analyses

UnReinforced Masonry (URM) structures experience severe damage due to in-plane and out-of-plane mechanisms when subjected to seismic actions. The assessment of the seismic vulnerability of URM generally requires complex analytical procedures consisting of the application of sophisticated numerical models. However, these models may request a high computational effort or may present an over-simplified scheme, mainly when the out-of-plane mechanisms are neglected. In this sense, a 3-dimensional macro-element model is here used for a preliminary assessment of the seismic vulnerability of a URM prototype characterized by an out-of-plane collapse mechanism. In this paper, the seismic vulnerability of this type of constructions is investigated by means of fragility functions in accordance with specific damage states and a given seismic input. The structural safety assessment was conducted by means of time history analyses with a limited computational effort. In addition, the evaluation of the limit states is here performed by means of an alternative approach named as Capacity Dominium based on the application of nonlinear static analyses.Peruvian Institution Innovate Perú/FINCyT (Fondo para la Innovación, Ciencia y Tecnología) through the PhD grant BECA-1-P-078-1