COMPARISON OF LOSS ASSESSMENT USING REFINED ANALYSIS AND SIMPLIFIED DDBA APPROACH FOR AN EXISTING BUILDING IN ITALY

The recently developed PEER Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) approach can be used to provide building owners and stakeholders with loss estimates, on which informed decisions can be made based on the likely performance of a building under seismic actions. The performance assessment procedure usually entails non-linear time history analyses of complex structural models, and subsequent evaluations of damage and losses, at multiple intensity levels, which requires considerable expertise and time. The motive of this work is to further the development and improvement of simplified assessment methods, that endeavor to provide reliable estimation of expected annual monetary losses stemming from earthquake induced damage to the building. This study compares results from the seismic assessment of an existing building of reinforced concrete frames with masonry infill walls and partitions in L’Aquila, Italy, using the refined PEER methodology for PBEE and a simplified method, which applies concepts of Direct Displacement-Based Assessment (DDBA). The methodologies presented are targeted at predicting the performance of the structure under seismic actions at different intensity levels, in order to quantify the direct losses in economic terms. The research finds that generally, the expected annual losses predicted using the Direct DBA procedure are comparable with those predicted by the rigorous PEER PBEE approach.