Using fuzzy sets for modeling seismic vulnerability of buildings Case study: Tabriz City

Earthquakes are one of the natural disasters which threaten many lives every year. If damages to the buildings can be estimated reliably in advance, it will be possible to reduce the human and property losses of the catastrophe by different pre-earthquake mitigation and preparation programs. However, the estimation of damages to the buildings is a complex decision making problem due to ‘lack of the statistical data about past earthquakes’, ‘fuzziness of experts’ judgments’ and ‘uncertainties of using numerical relations’. In order to reflect the uncertainty in the buildings damages model, this paper considers the role of fuzzy data for modeling incorporated knowledge-based uncertainties. Fuzzy sets theory is used to handle the incorporated ‘vagueness’ of the heuristic knowledge on ‘the relationships of the influencing criteria with buildings damages’. The applicability of the proposed method was tested in a municipality district of Tabriz, an earthquake prone historical city in Iran. The seismic vulnerability map representing the estimated damages to the buildings of the study area is produced. The results showed that the proposed method contributes to a realistic buildings damages model, by subsuming incorporated uncertainties.

کلیدواژه ها:

uncertainty ، fuzzy sets ، buildings damages model ، decision making ، GIS