Structural and non-structural seismic vulnerability assessment for schools and hospitals based on questionnaire surveys: Case studies in central America and India

Abstract

As numerous earthquake disasters in recent years have shown, the integrity of schools and hospital buildings is of utmost importance. For hospitals and health centers this holds especially true since these facilities have to remain fully operational in order to protect the lives of patients and health workers as well as to provide emergency care and medical treatment in the aftermath of the disaster. Even though possible direct economic losses caused by earthquake damage to school buildings are comparably low, every effort should be made to increase the seismic safety of schools in order to prevent damage and to protect pupils from harm. A fast and cost-effective procedure is proposed in order to assess the structural and non-structural seismic vulnerability of hospitals and schools. Through the application of standardized questionnaires, both a structural and nonstructural vulnerability index are derived which allow a priority ranking and an identification of the most vulnerable features so that responsible authorities are able to conduct a more targeted investigation using more advanced investigation methods. In contrast to other available approaches, structural and non-structural vulnerability are treated separately. While the structural vulnerability index is generated taking into account main design failures as well as the age of the building and its general state of maintenance, the non-structural vulnerability index covers all types of installations, secondary structural elements as well as their impact on the functionality of the building. To optimize a realistic selection of survey questions, the questionnaires have been applied to numerous hospitals and school buildings in Northern India and the Central American countries Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Based on these results and the experiences gained during these case studies, a calibration of the questionnaires was done through the definition of reliable weighting factors for the different vulnerability-affecting aspects.