Seismic vulnerability evaluation of existing R.C. buildings

Earthquakes are natural phenomena that occur at several places of the world. Severe earthquakes, when near inhabited districts, have caused extensive loss of life and property. Although some progress in the area of seismic prediction has been made, earthquakes cannot be accurately predicted in time, magnitude or location. Therefore, the main way of decreasing losses is to construct seismic resisting structures. Recent earthquakes illustrate that the older buildings, which are not designed to resist earthquakes, have been damaged rather than the buildings which have been designed according to seismic codes. Many existing buildings in Egypt were designed to resist the gravity loads only (GLD) without seismic provisions. The need is raised to study the vulnerability of these buildings to avoid a serious risk. In this paper, the light is shed on the significant contributions in the field of seismic vulnerability evaluation of buildings in order to suggest a suitable procedure for seismic evaluation of existing R.C. buildings in Egypt. Seismic evaluation was applied on the selected two case studies, one represents the GLD buildings and the other represents the buildings designed according to Egyptian code. Moreover, pushover analysis was conducted to investigate the vulnerability of these buildings.