Preliminary seismic vulnerability assessment of existing reinforced concrete buildings in Turkey Part II: Inclusion of site characteristics

The vulnerability assessment method, described in the companion paper [1], relies on a damage score, which is compared with an appropriate cutoff value to identify the buildings as "safe", "unsafe" or "intermediate". The cutoff values are considered to be valid for damaging earthquakes and regions similar to Duzce, where the data was gathered. To generalize the procedure, the variability of ground motion with respect to soil properties and the distance to source needs to be incorporated. This was done by modifying the cutoff values based on the above factors. Sites are classified according to the Turkish Seismic Code's [2] definitions based on the shear wave velocity. Various attenuation relations are used to account for the variation of the ground motion with distance and the soil type