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Probabilistic seismic vulnerability and loss assessment of the residential building stock in Costa Rica

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Abstract

This study presents a seismic vulnerability and risk assessment of the residential building stock in Costa Rica. It proposes a new exposure model using housing census data, public construction statistics, and private construction information to quantify and characterize the residential building portfolio. A complete vulnerability catalogue is established by developing fragility functions for the most common building classes and combining them with existing models derived for risk assessment in South America. An existing probabilistic seismic hazard model was implemented within the OpenQuake-engine, and complemented with a simplified site model to account for site effects. Earthquake risk assessment is achieved by means of a probabilistic event-based analysis, which allowed the estimation of several risk metrics. These include average annualized losses at a national scale, disaggregated per building class and administrative regions. The probable maximum losses and exceedance probability curves were generated using a stochastic event set with 100,000 years of events per logic tree branch.

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Source: CFIA construction prototypes (Yepes-Estrada et al. 2017) (left), numerical model used for the vulnerable assessment (right)

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Source: CFIA construction prototypes (Federate Board of Architects and Engineers of Costa Rica—CFIA 2014) (left). Photo of the vulnerable out-of-plane wall. Source: PC product manual (Concrete Products—PC 2015) (center). Model of the vulnerable component (right)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IUSS, Pavia, Italy

    A. Calderon

  2. Global Earthquake Model Foundation, Pavia, Italy

    V. Silva

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Calderon, A., Silva, V. Probabilistic seismic vulnerability and loss assessment of the residential building stock in Costa Rica. Bull Earthquake Eng 17, 1257–1284 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-018-0499-1

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