Vulnerability Analyses and Probabilistic Seismic Safety Analyses
One of the key tasks of earthquake engineering is the determination of seismic risks for existing and for planned buildings. Such risk assessments are performed by classical vulnerability analyses or – especially for buildings and components of industrial and power plant facilities – by fully probabilistic seismic safety analyses. Independent of the chosen method it is the aim to predict and quantify the expected damages of an individual building, a district or even a region for different possible earthquake intensities.
At the LBB, sophisticated methods are being developed to determine the probability of damage for different building types. Besides the consideration of structural damages, possible consequences for people and surrounding environment as well as economic losses are taken into account in the course of the analyses. Furthermore, interaction effects on the probability of failure of components of industrial or power generating facilities are considered by quantifying functional relationships in the course of the fragility analysis.