Framework for a city’s performance assessment in the case of an earthquake

Koren, David (author), Rus, Katarina (author)

A comprehensive assessment of a city’s vulnerability and resilience is a prerequisite for an effective response to a natural disaster, such as an earthquake. However, an appropriate method for assessing the seismic performance of a complex urban system is still being researched. To address this gap, the purpose of this paper is to introduce a method for seismic performance assessment of a city as a socio-physical system. Therefore, various studies of individual urban components and their interactions were combined into a holistic framework and presented in a case study of a small mid-European town. The seismic vulnerability of the building inventory was assumed or assessed based on the fragility curves adopted from the literature on similar European building stock. Seismic scenarios of different earthquake intensity (PGA of 0.15 g and 0.30 g) combined with conservative and risky approaches were applied. Considering the human perspective, urban performance was evaluated on the basis of accessibility to urban services that satisfy basic human needs (for survival and protection) via graph theory measures of global efficiency and the shortest path. The temporal aspect (before the earthquake, immediately after it, after evacuation, and after recovery) was also included to obtain a comprehensive resilience assessment. It turned out that a stronger earthquake (PGA of 0.30 g) would have far-reaching consequences for the urban performance of the investigated town, and the old city center would be particularly affected. Following the event, the system’s performance is less than half as effective compared to the initial level, indicating a sharp deterioration in the quality of life as reflected in the possibility of meeting basic human needs.

• Language: English
• Keywords: earthquakes, urban systems, urban performance, accessibility, resilience, human needs
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FA - Faculty of Architecture
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: 21 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 13, iss. 7, 1795
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-167025
• UDC: 699.8
• ISSN on article: 2075-5309
• DOI: 10.3390/buildings13071795
• COBISS.SI-ID: 158977027
• Publication date in RUL: 04.02.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Buildings
• Shortened title: Buildings
• Publisher: Molecular Diversity Preservation International
• ISSN: 2075-5309
• COBISS.SI-ID: 1024478292

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: potresi, urbani sistemi, delovanje mesta, dostopnost, odpornost, človekove potrebe

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P5-0068
• Name: Trajnostno oblikovanje kvalitetnega bivalnega okolja