Uncertainty and Fuzzy Decisions in Earthquake Risk Evaluation of Buildings

Abstract

The Northern region of Thailand has been considered as one of the seismic risk zones. However, most existing buildings in the area had been designed and constructed based on old building design codes without seismic consideration. Therefore, those buildings are required to upgrade based on earthquake building damage risk evaluation. With resource limitations, it is not feasible to retrofit all buildings in a short period. In addition, the results of the risk evaluation contain uncertain inputs and outputs. The objective of this study is to prioritize building retrofit based on fuzzy earthquake risk assessment. The risk assessment of a building was made considering the risk factors including (1) building vulnerability, (2) seismic intensity and (3) building values. Then, the total risk was calculated by integrating all the risk factors with their uncertainties using a fuzzy rule based model. An example of the retrofit prioritization is shown here considering the three fuzzy factors. The ranking is hospital, temple, school, government building, factory and house, respectively. The result helps decision makers to screen and prioritize the building retrofitting in the seismically prone area.