Seismic Risk Management

Seismic risk management is a problem of many dimensions, involving multiple inputs, interactions within risk factors, criteria, alternatives and stakeholders. The deployment of this process is inherently fraught with the issues of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty, posing extra challenges in the assessment, modelling and management stages. The complexity of earthquake impacts and the uncertain nature of information necessitate the establishment of a systematic approach to address the risk of many effects of seismic events in a reliable and realistic way. To fulfill this need, the study applies a systematic approach to the assessment and management of seismic risk and uses an integrated risk structure. The fuzzy set theory was used as a formal mathematical basis to handle uncertainties involved within risk parameters. Throughout the process, the potential impacts of an earthquake as the basic criteria for risk assessment were identified and relations between them were accommodated through a hierarchical structure. The various impacts of an earthquake are then aggregated through a composite fuzzy seismic risk index (FSRi) to screen and prioritize the retrofitting of a group of school buildings in Iran. Given the imprecise data which is the prime challenge for development of any risk model, the proposed model demonstrates a more reliable and robust methodology to handle vague and imprecise information. The significant feature of the model is its transparency and flexibility in aggregating, tracing and monitoring the risk impacts. The novelty of this study is that it serves as the first attempt of the process of a knowledge base risk-informed system for ranking and screening the retrofitting group of school buildings. The model is capable of integrating various forms of knowledge (quantitative and qualitative information) extracted from different sources (facts, algorithms, standards and experience). The outcomes of the research collectively demonstrate that the proposed system supports seismic risk management processes effectively and efficiently.