SEISMIC DAMAGE ASSESSMENT INDEX OF BUILDINGS USING FUZZYAHP APPROACH

Abstract

Geophysical-statistics show that about sixty percent of the total land mass of the Indian subcontinent is prone to earthquakes of moderate to very high intensity. Often damages are expressed in qualitative terms like small, moderate, severe and devastating etc. However, the building damage can be expressed in quantitative terms too and compared with respect to one another. Analytical Hierarchical process (AHP) is a well-known multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique to express qualitative measures in
quantitative terms. In order to handle ambiguity of the qualitative assessment by humans, the concept of fuzzy theory was embedded by many researchers to the AHP technique. The current study focuses on the development of seismic damage assessment index (SDAI) of buildings using fuzzy AHP technique. The index developed is applied on buildings damaged in 2011 Sikkim earthquake. These buildings are ranked on the basis of damage score. The proposed indexing model can help in comparing and ranking of the
buildings for the types of damages caused to them by earthquakes and also for identifying and studying the damage levels in a seismic event. Seismic damage indexing model presented based on fuzzy-AHP is simple, and hence, embraces the possibility for various civil, structural and earthquake engineering applications