Abstract
In this paper, seismic risk scenarios for Bucharest, the capital city of Romania, are proposed and assessed. Bucharest has one of the highest seismic risk levels in Europe, and this is due to a combination of relatively high seismic hazard and a building stock built mainly before the devastating Vrancea 1977 earthquake. In this study, the seismic risk of Bucharest is assessed using the most recent information regarding the characteristics of the residential building stock. The ground motion amplitudes are evaluated starting from random fields obtained by coupling a ground motion model derived for the Vrancea intermediate-depth seismic source with a spatial correlation model. The seismic risk evaluation method applied in this study is based on the well-known macroseismic method. For several structural typologies, the vulnerability parameters are evaluated based on a damage survey performed on 18,000 buildings in Bucharest after the March 1977 earthquake. Subsequently, the risk metrics are compared with those from other studies in the literature that apply a different risk assessment methodology in order to gain a better view of the uncertainties associated with a seismic risk study at city level. Finally, the impact of several Vrancea intermediate-depth earthquake scenarios is evaluated and the results show that the earthquake which has the closest epicenter to Bucharest appears to be the most damaging.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS–UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0697. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support. The authors are grateful to the National Statistics Institute (INS) for providing the information regarding the building inventory in Bucharest. The authors are also grateful to Dr. Mónica Amaral Ferreira for providing the QuakeIST code that was used for the analyses contained in this paper. The constructive feedback from two anonymous reviewers is greatly appreciated as it has helped us to considerably improve the quality of the manuscript.
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Pavel, F., Calotescu, I., Vacareanu, R. et al. Assessment of seismic risk scenarios for Bucharest, Romania. Nat Hazards 93 (Suppl 1), 25–37 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-2991-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-2991-3