Decision Making Tools for Seismic Risk

Conference ABSTRACT: Earthquake risk, and the benefits and deficiencies of possible risk mitigation options, need to be communicated in such as way as to allow appropriate and responsible decision-making. This paper describes the difficulty in making a decision about whether or not to consider earthquake in design or retrofit. Then, a series of visual/graphical tools for presenting the benefits of design and retrofit options for new and existing structures are described. These tools, which are developed based on a life cycle methodology, allow a quantitative assessment of the best technical solution as an aid to decision-making. The need for standardization of loss estimation methods is emphasised.