case studies in seismic risk assessment of masonry fire station buildings

Risk analysis serves as a fundamental component for decision-making in pre-event planning aimed at crisis prevention and emergency management. this paper presents a comprehensive risk analysis for two fire station unreinforced masonry buildings as case studies. we conduct both deterministic (dsha) and non-extensive probabilistic seismic hazard analyses (nepsha). the deterministic analysis indicates peak ground accelerations (pga) of 0.6g and 0.33 at the building sites. the nepsha reveals pga values corresponding to return periods of 10, 475, and 2475 years as 0.033g, 0.43g, and 0.745g, for site 1 and as 0.033g, 0.425g, and 0.761g, for site 2 respectively. additionally, we establish fragility curves for the existing masonry buildings with median and low code grades. the analysis determines the probabilities of various damage levels at different hazard intensities, and utilizing fema’s hazus methodology, we estimate the debris generated. these results indicate that the unreinforced masonry building, despite being equipped with horizontal and vertical tie beams, fails to meet the seismic design requirements. given the critical role of the fire department building in emergency response during and after an earthquake, further investigation into the building’s performance under severe and deterministic (scenario) earthquakes is essential.