GIS-Based Monitoring of Seismic Vulnerability for a Class of Concrete Structures during Lifetime Serviceability

Gabriela M. ATANASIU PhD Professor Gh Asachi Technical University of Iai, Romania Faculty of Civil Engineering Bd. D. Mangeron 43, 700050, Iai, Romania E-mail: atanasiu@ce.tuiasi.ro gmatanasiu@yahoo.com Florin LEON PhD Lecturer Gh Asachi Technical University of Iai, Romania Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science Bd. D. Mangeron 53, 700050, Iai, Romania E-mail: fleon@cs.tuiasi.ro Dan GLEA PhD Professor Gh Asachi Technical University of Iai, Romania Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science Bd. D. Mangeron 53, 700050, Iai, Romania E-mail: dgalea@cs.tuiasi.ro
G. M. Atanasiu is a Professor in the Department of Structural Mechanics within the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, since 1995, and a PhD Supervisor since 1999. She is also Vice Dean and her main research areas are: Modeling and Simulations in Structural Dynamics and Performancebased Earthquake Engineering.

F. Leon is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering since 2006, and his main research interests are: artificial intelligence, simulations using intelligent agents and data mining.

D. Glea is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and a PhD Supervisor. His main research areas are: artificial intelligence, knowledge-based geographical systems, image processing, and natural language processing.

Summary
This paper presents a methodology for GIS-based monitoring of the seismic performance, while taking into account the deteriorations revealed during GIS-based scenarios aiming at the identification of the seismic serviceability of the structure. The concept and methodology of using tools of Spatial Information System are described along with the corresponding scenarios of modeling, simulation and nonlinear seismic analysis applied to a class of damaged models for some of the RC structure typical of the existing urban infrastructure of Iai, Romania. Finally the management of GIS-based seismic vulnerability of existing concrete structure is presented as a tool for awareness and mitigation of seismic effects of possible future events in the urban area.
KEYWORDS

Existing concrete structures, seismic vulnerability, geographical information systems (GIS)

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1. Introduction
The earthquake loss estimation methodology is intended to provide local, state and regional officials with the tools necessary to assess the risks from earthquakes. This will help them to prepare for emergency response and recovery. Traditional loss estimation methodologies performed since the early 1970's can be characterized as stagnant: inventory data and geologic attributes were collected, one or more scenarios were evaluated and a report was written. Emphasis was given to one parameter over another based on what the author(s) considered the "controlling factor" and there was no mechanism to carry out what-if-analysis to account for the inventory variability, the geohazard data accuracy, and the uncertainty in the overall approach [1]. A GIS-based software tool was meant to change this approach. Tailored for different audiences with different needs, it uses a segmented modular approach which can be customized by the users in any way they see fit with the timeline and budget constraints they may face. Faced with limited resources and competing priorities, the decision-maker requires accurate and accessible information when dealing with natural hazards matters. One of the greatest challenges in developing adequate information resources is interoperability, or the need to accommodate multiple users, data providers, hazard stages, scenario simulations, and mitigation goals [2]. The Spatial Information Infrastructure and Geographical (or Spatial) Information Systems are valuable tools to address these issues. Romanians territory is located within one of the European area of strong ground-motions, being throughout centuries a place where earthquakes with intensity 7 on MSK scale or the magnitude on Richter scale more the 6 may have occurred. After the initiative sponsored in 1995 by Directorate XII for Science, Research and Development of the European Commission sponsored since research aimed at the retrieval, processing analysis and dissemination of strong motion data generated by earthquake and collected from strong motions networks and individual station in Europe a growing database in terms of digital records is now available for research and information. The Romanian Institute of Soil Physics is also posted for public use sets of earthquakes occurred in Romania in a Seismic National Catalogue, published in the Official Monitor of Romania [3]. Usually in seismic research, the level of local seismic risk in some potential risk area is evaluated based on seismic hazard assessment using Cornell [4] procedure in terms of computed PGA of the earthquake for a certain Return Period and Uniform Probability Response Spectra (UHRS). The development of GIS technologies coupled with the expanding of mobile laptops on one hand and the emergency of preparedness to handle and manage the vulnerable infrastructures of existing urban sites on the other hand lead to the elaboration of a research based methodology for a priori and post event management of seismic risk.

2. GIS for Seismic Risk Monitoring

A fundamental principle of risk assessment is that risk due to natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods is location dependent. The process of risk assessment involves hazard assessment and vulnerability analysis. The probability of earthquake occurrence varies depending on location, and local site conditions also play a vital role in determining the intensity of the earthquake. Zoning of hazard prone regions is a common practice. The vulnerability of buildings, other critical structures and population is dependent on their exposure to the hazard, which varies from location to location. The spatial characteristics of hazard and vulnerability justify the application of mapping and spatial technologies such as GIS in the risk assessment process. A widely accepted definition of GIS is the following: A Geographical Information System is an organized collection of hardware, software geographical data and personnel designed to efficiently capture, store, update manipulate, analyze and display all forms of geographically referenced information [5]. However, the term GIS could also be used to refer to the technology involved in capturing, storing, manipulating and analyzing spatial information. Spatial Information Infrastructure (SII) is the basis for a modern, efficient resource administration of large areas (e.g. a country), or smaller ones (e.g. a city). Management solutions based on SII have been first introduced in economically developed countries: USA, Canada, Japan, and have been lately adopted by the European Union in order to create a lifetime economic and social development

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of the whole continent [6]. Spatial Information Infrastructure can also be applied to a large city, such as Iai, Romania. In this case the digital map represents the digital cadastre of Iai city, in which all existing buildings are precisely located. Starting from this digital cadastre, more information sets can be added, regarding urban networks, demographical indicators, seismic vulnerability of buildings etc. Thus, the resulting Geographical Information System can be successfully used to carry on different managerial tasks at city level [7]. Analysis and simulation of diverse seismic scenarios are also made in an integrated fashion, taking into account all the information available in databases. For the analysis of earthquake effects, three hypotheses can be considered [1]: deterministic hazard an earthquake produced in a location where previous events have been recorded, probabilistic hazard an earthquake produced in a location statistically chosen from records of extended periods of time, respectively 100, 1000 or 2500 years, and user-defined hazard an earthquake simulated in a location desired by the user, with defined Peak Ground Acceleration and response spectra maps. Long before, while the event causing a disaster is still only a possibility in the unknown future, many potential disasters can be mitigated through thoughtful planning and careful design. Thanks to alert systems, we may get some minutes to days of warning when the event is imminent. This allows time for preparations, which could include boarding up windows, storing food and water, or evacuation. When the event happens, the main concern is of course to survive through it, but immediately afterwards the rescue and clean-up operations start. With that done, the reconstruction starts. In the reconstruction after an event one would naturally consider mitigation measures for the next one [8]. GIS support may be used for all the disaster prevention phases, but what we are concerned with here is the use of GIS for physical planning in the mitigation phase, so as to take the disaster risk into consideration as a fundamental property of the land [9]. This includes assigning appropriate land use, defining building codes for that land use, and providing shelter facilities and evacuation routes.

3. Methodology Description of Digital Management of Seismic Urban Risk

The whole process of digital management for the vulnerability of constructions in built urban environment is an integrated activity with multidisciplinary features, involving civil engineers as well as architects, IT administrators, and the public administration sector. The strategic objective of this process addresses the following purposes: P1 vulnerability assessment of existing infrastructure for planning the preventive measures of human safety against earthquake, as it has been proposed in the application of GIS to urban Northern Caucasian regions [10]; P2 creating instruments for the emergency management of situations based on a possible seismic scenario; P3 education goals for enhancing the social culture in crises management during and post catastrophic events; P4 building of safety patterns to seismic hazard in various urban samples, which will lead to a Digit City Map for evaluation of seismic vulnerability. This complex program needed a strategic planning for the methodology of GIS-based management of seismic urban risk. Such a planning has been initially set up by Atanasiu and Glea [6]. The research presently goes on in a Postdoctoral Program supported by Ministry of Education and Research of Romania within the Excellence Program CEEX developed between 2005 and 2007 [11]. Research has begun so far on an urban sample of Iai municipality, a city with about 360000 inhabitants with a complex urban structure of constructions, from historical monuments as churches and castles from the 15th 20th centuries to residential multi-floor buildings over 40 years of functionality, critical facilities, one-storey residential old houses over one hundred years, etc. This urban area experienced only in the last century, sometimes almost without any repairs, two strong ground motions over 7 in magnitude on the Richter scale and an important number of moderate

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earthquakes under 6 in magnitude due to still ongoing tectonic activities in the Vrancea area of the Romanian Carpathians. Our research is aiming to address the following activities: Extraction of a significant urban sample, considered as pilot for procedure implementation from a GIS based city map; Building the first database called STRUCT, an inventory based on available information on existing classes of constructions including initial design information, life-cycle data on existing constructions and facilities, soil data concerning the geology and geomorphology of the soil, local seismology information, data on earthquake resistance factor r determined by experts in their reports in agreement with the Romanian seismic code [12] for the constructions located in the pilot urban sample; Clustering the obtained database upon the structural class affiliation of constructions, type of structural critical state of damageability, social, economic and historical importance; Development of a second database named EMERGSAFE using GIS which includes all information on first aid in case of emergency (fire department locations, hospital locations, positioning of critical gas and electric facilities, or other important critical equipment in the city, information on transportation etc.); Implementation of a tool for city emergency management at the disposal of interested public or private stakeholders.

4.

Implementation of Monitoring Scheme

Following our objective of preventing the effects of the disasters on peoples safety from a dense populated urban area, we choose from the digital map of the city presented in Fig. 1, a generic sample which includes a significant number of different classes of constructions and critical facilities. Fig. 1 is a digital map of Iai, the second largest city of Romania, located in the NorthEastern part of the country.

Fig. 1 A digital map of Iai City

Fig. 2 A specific urban sample of the analyzed buildings

A brief inventory of the modern part of Iai coupled with information from technical expert reports shows that in the Central and South-Eastern part of the city a set of different classes of structures, having mostly residential destinations are considered in the first, second and respectively third stage of emergency state on the latest list of existing damaged buildings. Analyzing the structural characteristics and material type of construction, these buildings are grouped in the following main categories: shear wall buildings, reinforced concrete frame structures, and masonry structures. This selected urban sample is shown in Fig. 2. One of the most vulnerable classes of structure is the class of prefabricated shear wall with a typical topology of ground floor and fourth level, build after 1965. One of the typical structures existing in the analyzed urban sample is shown in Fig. 3. The methodology we used for vulnerability assessment described previously consisted of finite element

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modeling of the building and the spectrum response analysis for two cases of peak ground acceleration PGA of 0.5g and 1g respectively. The results concerning the period of vibration for two stages of the modeling: a-priori designed model (as a new structure) and the model obtained on real existing damaged structure are presented in Table 1, and the results of stress analysis given in response spectrum method are illustrated in Fig. 4. Table 1. Results of the modal analysis using SAP 2000
OutputCase Text modal modal modal modal modal StepType Text Mode Mode Mode Mode Mode StepNum Unitless 1 2 3 4 5 Period Sec 0.410182 0.381126 0.291611 0.154651 0.136173 Frequency Cyc/sec 2.4379E+00 2.6238E+00 3.4292E+00 6.4662E+00 7.3436E+00 CircFreq rad/sec 1.5318E+01 1.6486E+01 2.1546E+01 4.0628E+01 4.6141E+01 Eigenvalue rad2/sec2 2.3464E+02 2.7178E+02 4.6425E+02 1.6506E+03 2.1290E+03

The shear wall has usually a height of 2.8 m, a span between 3 m and 5.40 m, a thickness range between 0.12 m and 0.25 m. The corresponding concrete resistance class is C16/20, according to Romanian Code [12].

Fig. 3 Initial model of the building

Fig. 4 Damaged structure response S22 stress state for seismic analysis

Using the global damage index recommended by DiPasquale and Cakmak [13], we can assess the damageability index of the structure which is in our case:
DI 1

T0 initial T0 equivalent

0.23 0.439 0.41

(1)

Taking into account the scale of damageability presented in IDARC [14], one can assess that this structure belongs to the class of Severe Degree of Damage, with DI between 0.4 and 1.0. Applying GIS technology, the results of the diagnosis presented is visualized on the digital map of seismic vulnerability for the analyzed urban sample and the methodology will be extended for the whole class of buildings belonging to the same topology cluster.

5.

Conclusions

The present paper highlights our concept of vulnerability assessment in a deterministic manner for an existing infrastructure in big urban sites, exposed repeatedly to a various range of earthquakes and lack of continuous maintenance measures during life cycle serviceability of a building. The methodology of vulnerability assessment is illustrated on a representative pilot structure selected from the urban sample of existing damaged infrastructure. Using GIS technology, by generalization,

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the digital map of seismic vulnerability can be built, which is useful for the risk management of cities requested by various stakeholders of local and national importance. This paper presented partial results of the implemented methodology in an on-going stage, the whole study being under development using a statistical approach.

6.
[1]

References

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[10]

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