Developing seismic vulnerability curves for typical Iranian buildings

Iran is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. In recent earthquakes, the low quality of constructions has caused huge losses, both in human and economic terms. The high level of seismic hazard in combination with a high physical vulnerability of structures leads to a high earthquake risk of Iran, which has to be managed in some ways. Earthquake happening in populated areas causing economic and human losses has shown the vital role of assessing buildings' vulnerabilities as well as loss estimations. Vulnerability curve is one of the essential instruments to evaluate structural losses before the events. Regarding the lack of categorized vulnerability curves for Iranian buildings, this study focuses on filling this critical gap. For this reason, empirical approach involving statistical processing on existing data from the previous studies is used to develop vulnerability curves for Iranian buildings by critiquing the existing fragility/ vulnerability curves in Iran and other countries. The logic-tree method is used to combine these curves by weighting in accordance with the condition of construction provisions, seismic code and engineering judgment. Finally, vulnerability curves are developed for the 42 Iranian building types. Results are presented by median (Sa) and lognormal standard deviation (bSa) values for all types of selected buildings and related uncertainties are considered as well.