Performance Assessment of Turkish Residential Buildings for Seismic Damage and Loss Estimation

This study aims to present an integrated method in a probabilistic manner for seismic performance assessment of Turkish residential buildings, which can be used as a tool to estimate earthquake losses due to structural damage. In particular, the objective is to determine the performances of different types of residential buildings for predicting the potential seismic loss in terms of casualties (death toll) for a highly populated city in northwestern Turkey. The main phases of this study are seismic hazard, building performance in terms of fragility functions, and loss in terms of damage states of buildings and total number of casualties. To quantify the regional hazard, a probabilistic seismic hazard assessment approach is adopted. For different types of building structures, probabilities of satisfying predefined performance levels for a given hazard level are determined using appropriate fragility curve sets produced by using local characteristics. The results are expressed as expected losses in 50 years in terms of number of casualties obtained as a function of the estimated performance of building types under concern. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.