Preliminary seismic vulnerability assessment of existing reinforced concrete buildings in Turkey - Part I: Statistical model based on structural characteristics

The 1999 earthquakes caused huge damage and economic losses in Turkey. The city of Duzce, hit by the second earthquake of Mw=7.2, suffered widespread damage to many RC buildings. Survey teams conducted post-earthquake evaluations on selected buildings that suffered various degrees of damage. The information collected was analyzed to set up a correlation between the attributes affecting seismic performance and the observed damage. A procedure, developed using a statistical method called discriminant analysis, is presented. The details of the procedure and the content of the database are summarized. The variability of ground motion with respect to the soil properties and the distance to source was incorporated in the improved procedure presented in the companion paper [1].