Strategies for the Vulnerability Assessment of Large Building Stocks

The description of building vulnerability and resultant derived damage prognoses for different impact levels are the key element for any seismic risk study (see Figure 1). In cases where realistic, detailed and reliable risk scenarios should support socioeconomic decisions and mitigation strategies, the entire building stock must be considered, and a broad database is needed to allocate empirical vulnerability and/ or analytical fragility functions for the damage assessment. The engineer-assigned (most probable) vulnerability, performance score or building type specific fragility function have to consider the uncertainty in building response characteristic and the particularities of the local construction practice.