Computer-Aided Decision Making for Regional Seismic Risk Mitigation Accounting for Limited Economic Resources

Abstract

Seismic risk mitigation levels for an existing building are a balance between the reduction of risk and the cost of rehabilitation. Evidently, the more that is paid the more risk is reduced; however, due to limited public budgets a practical approach is needed to manage the risk reduction program when a portfolio of buildings is concerned. Basically, decision makers face a challenge when there are a large number of vulnerable buildings and there is no plan for how to allocate the appointed budget. This study develops a technological platform that implements a decision-making procedure to establish how to optimally distribute the budget in order to achieve the maximum possible portfolio risk reduction. Decisions are made based on various presumed intervention strategies dependent on building’s level of risk. The technological platform provides an interactive, user-friendly tool, available online, that supports stakeholders and decision makers in understanding what the best economic resource allocation will be after selecting the available budget for a specific portfolio of buildings. In addition, the ease of use enables the user to analyze the extent of risk reduction achievable for different budget levels. Therefore, the web platform represents a powerful tool to accomplish two challenging tasks, namely optimal budget selection and optimal budget allocation to gain territorial seismic risk mitigation.

Keywords

• regional risk assessment
• seismic risk mitigation
• seismic risk management
• optimal budget allocation
• optimal budget selection
• prioritization