Inventory of Essential Facilities in Mid-America

The earthquake hazard in mid-America is characterized by large, but infrequent events. As a result, the level of seismic building design and retrofit is generally thought to be lower than in many other seismically active regions, however the exact nature of the building stock is not known. In developing its research agenda the Mid-America Earthquake Center determined that an inventory of essential facilities in the region was part of the foundation needed to support its research efforts. Rather than focus on the entire building stock, we selected essential facilities as the most critical target for this initial investigation. Essential facilities are those facilities that must play an important role in the recovery period following an earthquake. They include hospitals, police and fire stations and schools, which often serve as emergency shelters. This report summarizes the analysis of 1306 essential facilities for which key structural characteristics were collected through telephone survey contacts. The essential facility inventory was found to be relatively fragile with a large number of unreinforced masonry structures. Schools appear to be the most vulnerable type of facility due to their age, construction types and location with respect to the hazard. The data described here is available to state and local emergency managers over the Internet: http://mae.ce.uiuc.edu/ResearchPrograms/CRP/BodyEFP.htm or http://cgis.gatech.edu/Projects/projects.html.National Science Foundation EEC-970178