RAPID WEB-BASED SEISMIC RISK ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS

A web-based system is designed and implemented at cira.civil.sharif.ir to evaluate and communicate the seismic risk to the public. Risk, in this context, denotes the probability distribution of monetary and social losses, i.e., repair cost and injuries, respectively. The system envisions three groups of target audience: 1) Building owners with the objective of raising the public awareness about the significant seismic risk in Iran; 2) Engineers with the objective of promoting risk-based design in engineering practice; 3) Policymakers with the objective of providing a comprehensive database of building information and risk estimates for mitigation decisions. This paper addresses the communication of risk to the first group, and the objectoriented architecture of the system facilitates its steady growth to address the other two groups. The paper presents the implemented risk analysis approach and the modifications made to tailor this approach to the construction quality and the seismic provisions in Iran. The paper also illustrates the input interface of the system for data collection and its output interface for presenting and interpreting the risk analysis results to building owners. The paper is concluded by explaining the ongoing research to further develop the system in order to address all three groups of audience enumerated above.

Keywords:

Seismic Risk , Risk Communication , Web , Object-Oriented Programming