DEFINING VULNERABILITY SCORE MODIFIERS FOR PARAMETERS THAT AFFECT RAPID VISUAL SURVEY SCORE: A NUMERICAL STUDY

Abstract

It is well known that loss of life during an earthquake event is mainly due to collapse of buildings that are not designed, executed or maintained properly. Therefore there is an urge for pre-earthquake vulnerability assessment of buildings in moderate-to-severe earthquake prone areas world-wide. Vulnerability assessment of a building is a challenging task and it has to be dealt very carefully. However, for large number of buildings in a city or town, some simple methods have to be employed. Rapid Visual Survey (RVS) is one such method which is widely used all over the world. It uses many parameters like presence of soft storey, plan irregularities, stiffness irregularities, short-column effect, etc., for evaluating the score. This score has a limitation because the forms that are developed at one place cannot be used in different region, due to large variation in design guidelines and construction technology and hence it is important to develop forms which are specific to an area and also building technology used. In addition, it is also important to calibrate RVS scores to possible damage indicators. Hence it is important to know the effect of individual parameter (i.e., vulnerability score modifier) on the overall score. This paper describes the numerical procedure for defining the value of vulnerability score modifiers for parameters that affect RVS score.