Selecting Building Vulnerability Functions for Earthquake Loss Estimation Studies

In many cases, earthquake loss estimation (ELE) studies are conducted by selecting existing seismic vulnerability models (fragility/vulnerability functions) that had been originally derived for similar building typologies in other parts of the world rather than to develop customized functions that address the peculiar structural and non-structural characteristics of the respective building stock. The reasons for this are either to reduce the calculation efforts, especially when studies are conducted for large portions of the building stock, lack of available resources, or lack of information that would allow a detailed survey and data acquisition. The present work illustrates the strength of the fragility/vulnerability functions’ representativeness on the outcomes of ELE studies. Based on a test bed located in a seismically exposed region a comparison study between existing (collected, assigned) and user-defined (generated, customized) vulnerability functions is conducted.