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Seismic Vulnerability and Risk Assessment in Urban Areas in Dominican Republic. An Application to Santo Domingo Este.

Description: 

The Dominican Republic has a high seismicity, due to the position of the Hispaniola Island on the northern edge of the Caribbean plate where seismicity is especially intense, causing the entire island to be affected by a high seismic hazard. Seismic risk reduction involves attacking one of the two factors that contribute to it: the hazard and/or the vulnerability. Regarding the first factor, the options are limited, since the hazard cannot be reduced, this implies that the only way to reduce the risk is by reducing the vulnerability of the built environment. As part of the research project "Evaluation of the seismic hazard of Hispaniola island and the seismic risk in populations of the Dominican Republic", seismic hazard maps of the island and a list of the most important populations exposed to the greatest hazard have been obtained. From this, the municipality of Santo Domingo Este, was identified as a zone of priority interest to assess seismic risk. In this study, we start from the seismic vulnerability assessment based on the existing construction typologies in the area, where a field survey and a visual analysis through the Street View Map images were carried out. The information collected was classified into a limited number of typologies that statistically represent the entire housing stock. An exposure database was generated that contains the geometries of the buildings, and attributes that influence their seismic performance, such as occupants, construction materials, height, function and area. Based on these attributes, a vulnerability model is assigned to the buildings, based on the HAZUS scale which indicates how they will behave in the face of seismic shaking. Regarding seismic risk, empirical and analytical methods will be used and the most suitable capacity and fragility curves will be identified for the construction typologies of the Dominican Republic. The results will yield maps of the expected losses for the seismic scenarios identified with different exceedance probabilities in the hazard study.

Session: Advances in Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis and Applications [Poster]

Type: Poster

Date: 4/20/2023

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Claudia Germoso

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors