Effect of critical sub-system failures on the post-earthquake functionality of buildings: A case study for Montreal hospitals

When an earthquake occurs, hospitals are expected to remain functional as they play a crucial role in emergency care operations. This ability to ensure the continuity of quality operations while ensuring the safety of occupants during and after an earthquake defines the concept of post-earthquake functionality. Hospital functionality relies on the good performance of a large number of critical sub-systems, components and equipment. Although the global seismic performance of building structures and non-structural components was extensively observed, there is incomplete information on the effect of building and non-structural damage on post-earthquake functionality. The objective of this paper is to present a methodology for the assessment of post-earthquake functionality of existing Montreal hospitals using fault-tree analysis. The study shows that using accurate information on the vulnerability and fragility of structural and critical non-structural components, a probabilistic index of post-earthquake functionality of the entire facility and its sub-systems is computed which informs mitigation action for the critical failure processes through the system.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author