Method for prioritising buildings for seismic reinforcement based on prediction of earthquake-induced building collapse and evacuation routes

Seismic design and seismic reinforcement of buildings are important for reducing seismic damage. Buildings have been prioritised for seismic reinforcement from various perspectives, but approaches considering the reduction in the effective road width after building collapse and the evacuation demand for each road link have not been developed. In this study, the effective road width was calculated by estimating the width of collapsed building debris, and the evacuation demand for each road link was predicted using mobile phone location data. The results indicated that it is possible to extract buildings that require seismic reinforcement most urgently among the buildings vulnerable to earthquakes for efficient post-earthquake evacuation. The proposed method can be used to develop appropriate prioritisation strategies for optimising the use and allocation of available economic resources to minimise future earthquake losses.