Web-Based System for Evaluation and Communication of Seismic Risk

A web-based system is designed to evaluate and communicate the seismic risk to the public. In this context, risk denotes the mean monetary and social losses. The system aims at communicating the risk to building owners with the objective of raising the public awareness of the significant seismic risk in Iran. This is the first step towards motivating the society to take appropriate risk mitigation measures. The object-oriented architecture of the system facilitates its steady growth to accommodate more advanced risk analysis techniques. The adopted risk analysis approach is tailored to the construction quality and the seismic regulations in Iran. The system receives elementary, observable characteristics of the building as input, and interprets the resulting risk in layman’s terms. It is showcased by two real-world buildings at the campus of Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran: one unreinforced-masonry dormitory and one steelbraced educational building. As an example result, the system predicts a significantly higher rate of fatality for the dormitory due to the poor performance of unreinforced masonry. The paper is concluded by explaining the ongoing research by the authors to further develop the system with more advanced risk communication techniques.