Seismic Risk Management By : Kamran Vahdat Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Engineering May 2015 - ii - The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Kamran Vahdat to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2015 The University of Leeds and Kamran Vahdat - iii - Acknowledgements I am indebted to many individuals and organizations for their assistance as this thesis went through the various stages of production. First, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor Prof Nigel Smith for his critical advice and painstaking comments during the production of this thesis. I would also like to acknowledge my local advisor Prof Ghodrati Amiri for his stimulating supports, suggestions and providing me with the chance to review reviewing the school retrofitting projects compendium. In addition, thanks and appreciation are due to the Organization of School Renovation and Development in Iran and in particular, the School Rehabilitation Office for providing the school data. I would like to thank all those who, in one way or another took an interest in the production of this research and gave such useful feedback for the development of the topic. Finally and very importantly, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my family – my mother Dr Mirhabibi, my wife Sheida and my son Amir – for their unlimited support, love, patience and encouragement throughout my years of study. - iv - List of Publication The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own, except where work which has formed part of jointly authored publications has been included. The contribution of the candidate and the other authors to this work has been explicitly indicated below. The candidate confirms that appropriate credit has been given within the thesis where reference has been made to the work of others. 1. Vahdat K; Smith NJ; Amiri GG (2015) Seismic Risk Management: A system-based perspective, Journal of Risk Management, (16) 294–318. The paper provides the main concept of the thesis which has been extracted from Chapters 2 and 3. Prof Smith provided fundamental help in planning, structure and stylish form of the paper and deeply supported in revising. Prof Amiri provided important help in the final revision of the paper which is also acknowledged. 2. Vahdat K; Smith NJ; Amiri GG (2014) Fuzzy multicriteria for developing a risk management system in seismically prone areas, Journal of Socio- Economic Planning Sciences , (48) 235 – 248 A fuzzy MCDM model was developed by the candidate through Excel spreadsheets. The structure and content was undertaken by the candidate and was partially extracted from Chapters 3 and 7. Prof Smith provided fundamental help in planning the design experiments, review, revise and control the structure of the paper, stylish, grammar and form of presentation. Prof Amiri also provided technical suggestion regarding earthquake aspects and facilitated collecting earthquake data. 3. Vahdat K; Smith NJ (2014) A risk-based system for managing the retrofitting of school buildings in seismic prone areas: A case study from Iran. International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, (17), 311-331. The model developed and implemented using KBES. The candidate also used MATLAB software programming for modelling, interpreting and presenting the results which was partially extracted from Chapters 5 & 7 of the thesis. - v - Prof Smith deeply supported in planning, structure, revising and control the product before final submission and also stylish and format of the paper. The Prof Amiri provided critical suggestions for structure, and facilitated the input data required for modelling and control the technical aspects. 4. Vahdat K; Smith NJ; Amiri GG (2014) Developing a Knowledge Based Expert System (KBES) for Seismic Risk Management, Proceedings of the second international conference on Vulnerability and risk analysis and management (ICVRAM), Liverpool UK, 1746-1755 A novel approach described within the paper was carried out by the candidate and was extracted from chapters 4 & 5. Co-authors provided important help in the final revision of the paper which is also acknowledged. 5. Vahdat K; Smith NJ; Amiri GG (2014) Seismic Risk Management: A system-based perspective, Proceedings of the second international conference on Vulnerability and risk analysis and management (ICVRAM), Liverpool UK, 2675-2684 The critical review within the paper was conducted by the candidate which was taken from chapter 2. Co-authors provided important help in the final revision of the paper which is also acknowledged. 6. Vahdat K; Smith NJ (2010) A DSS framework for selecting projects in seismic areas, Association of Researchers in Construction Management, ARCOM 2010 - Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference, 1209-1218 The method proposed within the paper was conducted by the candidate and was partially used in chapter 2. Prof Smith provided technical support and reviewing in the final revision of the paper. 7. Vahdat K; Smith NJ (2010) Multidisciplinary Integrated Tools in Seismic Risk Management, CIB Conference, University of Salford, UK The paper review the literature conducted by the candidate and reviewed by the co-author. - vi - Abstract Seismic risk management is a problem of many dimensions, involving multiple inputs, interactions within risk factors, criteria, alternatives and stakeholders. The deployment of this process is inherently fraught with the issues of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty, posing extra challenges in the assessment, modelling and management stages. The complexity of earthquake impacts and the uncertain nature of information necessitate the establishment of a systematic approach to address the risk of many effects of seismic events in a reliable and realistic way. To fulfill this need, the study applies a systematic approach to the assessment and management of seismic risk and uses an integrated risk structure. The fuzzy set theory was used as a formal mathematical basis to handle uncertainties involved within risk parameters. Throughout the process, the potential impacts of an earthquake as the basic criteria for risk assessment were identified and relations between them were accommodated through a hierarchical structure. The various impacts of an earthquake are then aggregated through a composite fuzzy seismic risk index (FSRi) to screen and prioritize the retrofitting of a group of school buildings in Iran. Given the imprecise data which is the prime challenge for development of any risk model, the proposed model demonstrates a more reliable and robust methodology to handle vague and imprecise information. The significant feature of the model is its transparency and flexibility in aggregating, tracing and monitoring the risk impacts. The novelty of this study is that it serves as the first attempt of the process of a knowledge base risk-informed system for ranking and screening the retrofitting group of school buildings. The model is capable of integrating various forms of knowledge (quantitative and qualitative information) extracted from different sources (facts, algorithms, standards and experience). The outcomes of the research collectively demonstrate that the proposed system supports seismic risk management processes effectively and efficiently. - vii - Table of Contents Acknowledgements....................................................................................................... iii List of Publication...........................................................................................................iv Abstract .............................................................................................................................vii List of Tables.................................................................................................................. xiii List of Figures ..................................................................................................................xv List of Abbreviations.................................................................................................xviii Table of Contents ...........................................................................................................vii Chapter 1: Introduction.................................................................................................1 1.1 Research Background ............................................................................................ 1 1.2 Research Motivation............................................................................................... 3 1.3 Research Purpose.................................................................................................... 5 1.4 Aims and Objectives ............................................................................................... 7 1.5 Limitation and Scope.............................................................................................. 7 1.6 Thesis Outline ........................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2: Seismic Risk Management...................................................................