Prioritizing Buildings for Seismic Retrofit on the Basis of RVS Score: Fid-Bau Portal

Prioritizing Buildings for Seismic Retrofit on the Basis of RVS Score

Jha, Salil / Pal, Shilpa

As per the studies conducted in past, it has been stipulated that it is not the earthquakes which kill humans, instead it is the poor and substandard practices involved in the construction of building which leads to its failure in the seismic event. Although, various IS codes for the design of building are available, but due to the rapid urbanization, they have been overlooked. Therefore, such deficient buildings need to be screened at earlier stage in order to address their vulnerability. Various screening guidelines have been issued by different agencies, but FEMA P-154 (2015) supplements the screening in the most comprehensive manner by scoring the screened building for its various attributes like RVS score has been used to calculate risk of earthquake causing the collapse of building [1]. Two different types of structures have been taken, i.e. RCC G + 3 building and load-bearing masonry building for calculating the risk score and its associated vulnerability using the technique as per FEMA for any seismic activity in the next 50 years. It has been found that the load-bearing masonry building has 3.11% chance of being confronted by an earthquake that can cause collapse. And the probability of an earthquake causing the RCC G + 3 building to collapse over the next 50 years has been calculated to be 1.57%. The risk score is an indicator of the degree of fatality of the building, and it has been calculated that load-bearing masonry building is 100 times more fatal than the newly constructed load-bearing masonry building. Therefore, there is a need to detail structural evaluation for retrofitting the load-bearing masonry building to be safe under any seismic activity. Hence, as per the study, the methodology will help in prioritizing the building for detailed structural evaluation and retrofitting recommendations.