SUMMARY

A methodology to evaluate quantitatively the seismic risk and the cost-effectiveness of a base isolated building during its lifetime is presented. The process starts with the hazard analysis and the earthquake ground motion modeling for the studied area. Series of artificial earthquake ground motions are generated by a stochastic method. To get the response distribution of the target building, several dynamic nonlinear analyses are carried out by using the generated artificial motions as input waves. By assuming a structural response distribution, the seismic risk analysis is performed in terms of three structural parameters such as: interstory drift ratio (IDR), floor acceleration (FA) and the structural damage index (DI). Finally, the cost-effectiveness of using base isolation system is examined, by comparing the exceedance probability of repair cost in the target building with and without base isolation during a given time period