Seismic Damage Assessment in Erzincan (Turkey) utilizing Synthetic Ground Motion Records

Loss estimation studies exercised for seismically active regions generally require fragility analyses to be performed which necessitate the use of ground motion records. These records could be ‘real’, i.e. recorded, acceleration time series or for regions with sparse ground motion data, ‘synthetic’ records consistent with the regional seismicity and produced using alternative simulation techniques. This study mainly concentrates on seismic damage estimation of Erzincan, which is a city on the eastern part of Turkey located in the conjunction of three active faults as right lateral North Anatolian Fault, left lateral North East Anatolian Fault and left lateral Ovacik fault, considering both regional seismicity and local building information. For this purpose, to generate a set of scenario earthquakes by using regional seismicity parameters of Erzincan, Stochastic Finite Fault Methodology has been followed as the simulation technique. Then, existing building stock are classified into specified groups that are represented with equivalent single-degree-of-freedom systems where the inelastic dynamic structural characteristics of the models are investigated. The response statistics of the structures are evaluated through non-linear time history analysis. Finally, the suitability of the methodology is evaluated by comparing the estimated damage levels with the observed ones during the 1992 Erzincan earthquake. The results seem to have a reasonable match in between