Influence of structural properties and hazard level on seismic loss estimation for light-frame wood structures

The financial loss for residential light-frame wood structures during moderate to strong earthquakes has a substantial impact on society due to the large stock of this building type in the US. The sensitivity of financial losses as a function of structural properties and seismic hazard level is examined in this paper for a two-story residential woodframe structure representative of a North American floor plan. The strength and stiffness of the structure were correlated with the change in the nail schedule for the shearwalls as well as construction quality. The effect of these variants on the short and long term financial loss was then investigated through loss simulations which utilize assembly-based vulnerability (a method to estimate total loss for a structure due to a natural hazard based on individual component losses). The impact of seismic hazard level on financial loss estimation was also examined for three locations representing different seismic hazard levels. It was concluded that there exists an intensity sensitive region for strength and stiffness which limits the effectiveness of improvements for small or large earthquakes. In addition, it was shown that the effect of construction quality in high seismic zones was disproportionate compared to the effect in low seismic zones.