Assessing the seismic vulnerability of existing buildings has become critical due to past and current damages and losses caused by seismic events, both socially and economically. In this context, large-scale vulnerability assessments are important, particularly in disaster risk reduction and management, because they provide decision-makers with a simple and reliable method for understanding...
This paper provides detailed investigation of the methodologies developed for seismic vulnerability assessment in the area. Empirical, analytical, and hybrid approaches that have been regionally developed and applied are summarized and their similarities and differences are discussed. Having in mind the parallels in existing structural archetypes in the region (N. Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and...
An effective seismic risk assessment of building stock is crucial for informing stakeholders about potential issues and enhancing community resilience. Recently, a parametric pushover curve model was introduced, enabling the estimation of building-specific pushover curves and fragility functions even with a low level of knowledge about the building. The model estimates a trilinear pushover...
With the significant advancements in computational power over recent decades, nonlinear response history analysis has become more prevalent in seismic design and assessment. A critical step in these applications is the selection and scaling of appropriate ground motion records. However, state-of-the-art record selection procedures are rarely employed by engineers due to the lack of...
Seismic risk assessment in Montenegro has been a critical concern since the devastating earthquake of 1979, which spurred initial studies for the country's spatial planning. In response, significant efforts were made to mitigate seismic risks and regulate the construction of earthquake-resistant structures. Early vulnerability studies were based on damage observations from the 1979 earthquake....
Modular construction has been increasingly used worldwide due to its fast assembly, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability; however, the performance of these structures in seismic-prone regions remains a significant engineering challenge.
The seismic behavior of modular buildings varies significantly, depending on the configuration of prefabricated modules and their intra- and...
The purpose of this paper is to provide clarification to individuals attempting to create models for seismic exposure as well as seismic vulnerability and risk, based on the seismic lateral loads established by the Yugoslavian seismic design codes. The particular focus of the research are the JUS 39/64 and JUS 31/81 seismic design codes, since they were active codes for a significant period of...
The computationally intensive nature of performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE), particularly when implemented through detailed component-based approaches such as FEMA P-58, has limited its use primarily to academic research and specific studies. A more streamlined alternative, favoured by practitioners, employs story loss functions (SLFs) to estimate expected monetary loss per story...
The built environment is, globally speaking, the largest unknown in the understanding of the effects of disasters and in assessing their risk. Detailed knowledge of it is necessary for many tasks in disaster risk reduction but also in other fields, e.g. climate-related sustainability, urban planning and management, insurance and re-insurance. While in well-regulated countries cadastral data is...
Exposure assessment is paramount for disaster risk reduction, but there are still many open challenges to develop high-resolution, up-to-date reliable exposure models. Existing research efforts are focused on developing global-scale high-resolution exposure layers on the building level and enriching them with local features collected using different methods. Depending on the hazard at stake,...
Assessing earthquake risk in regions with moderate to high seismic hazard, such as parts of Republic of North Macedonia, is essential for effective risk management and mitigation strategies. Comprehensive risk assessments enable predictions about where high-intensity earthquakes are most likely to occur and what their potential impacts might be. In the frame of Study for Natural and technical...
One of the main challenges of implementing the performance-based earthquake engineering framework and computing risk and associated consequences on a regional scale is incorporating structure-to-structure damage correlation in the analysis. This correlation relates to the expected damage between different structures in a region, considering they were likely built with similar characteristics,...
The seismic vulnerability assessment of existing urban areas provides fundamental information about the process of reduction of seismic risk in different phases of planning and emergency management. This contribution presents recent advances in seismic vulnerability assessment in Croatian coastal areas at different scales, starting with a detailed analytical approach at the building scale to...
The Republic of North Macedonia (RNM) is characterized by a moderate to high seismic hazard. Combined with the vulnerability of the existing building stock, the impact of earthquakes continues to be substantial. The implementation of risk mitigation strategies at regional or national levels includes the seismic assessment of a wide range of buildings. Given the significant social and economic...
The vulnerability of the built environment to seismic events has been increasingly evident, particularly in the Balkan region, where recent earthquakes have caused significant non-structural damage to both old and new buildings, often leading to restricted use. In North Macedonia, seismic design standards were introduced only after the catastrophic Skopje earthquake in 1963, with the first...
This study addresses the behaviour of bare plane RC frames and RC frames strengthened by the addition of masonry infill in combination with the connection of infill and frame elements for earthquake action. The main objective was to explore the possibilities of using infill walls in RC frames as a strengthening method, observing the in-plane cyclic responses obtained through experimental tests...
Urban historic centers, consisting mostly of vulnerable unreinforced stone and brick masonry structures constructed without seismic design considerations, experience significant earthquake damage. This paper uses a vulnerability index method to obtain and discuss a pre-earthquake vulnerability assessment of a representative part of Skopje's Old Bazaar. This method calculates a score for each...
SP-BELA (Simplified Pushover-Based Earthquake Loss Assessment) is a methodology that allows to define the vulnerability of a building taxonomy by associating it with a portfolio of capacity curves. The main advantage of this methodology is that it keeps the capacity of the buildings separate from the demand imposed by the shaking at the site. This makes the methodology highly flexible and, in...
Seismic risk analysis of building stocks in earthquake prone regions build the entry for any kind of mitigation measures especially in case of fast urbanization in developing countries. Iraq – one of such countries – lies in the northern portion of the Arabian plate, bounded in the North-East by the Bitli-Zagros fold and Thrust belt, where the convergent tectonic boundary between the Eurasia...
