Fragility analysis methods: Review of existing approaches and application

In this paper, different fragility analysis methods are described and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed: (i) the safety factor method, in which the fragility curve is estimated based on safety margins with respect on an existing deterministic design; the numerical simulation method, in which the parameters of the fragility curve are obtained by (ii) regression analysis or (iii) maximum likelihood estimation from a set of nonlinear time history analysis at different seismic levels; (iv) the incremental dynamic analysis method where a set of accelerograms is scaled until failure. These four fragility analysis methods are applied to determine fragility curves for the 3-storey reinforced concrete shear wall building of the SMART2013 benchmark project. Advantages and disadvantages of the methods are illustrated and the impact of the simplifying assumptions (e.g. lognormal curves, scaling) are assessed.