PARTNER · Probabilistic Assessment of Reduction and Transfer of Natural Earthquake Risk

Probabilistic Assessment of Reduction and Transfer of Natural Earthquake Risk

Seismic risk management in fast-growing populated seismic areas is a challenge for governments and communities in case of catastrophic events. Seismic resilience options are considered to mitigate risk, by either reducing the risk through vibration-control designs of risky assets, or by transferring the risk into the capital markets, through disaster financing options or (re)insurers. Both strategies require a good understanding of the seismic risk, which can be achieved only through thorough ground-motion uncertainty quantification and propagation to structural response, and accurate estimates of damage, cost and downtime estimates of the affected assets. The current proposal presents a complete framework to analyze the effects of resiliency measures on the overall risk of communities by (1) developing novel probabilistic model to characterize local seismic hazard by using site-specific records; (2) characterizing the exposed assets accurately using complex systems and dropping the linearity assumption of system's behaviour under seismic loads; (3) developing novel and efficient seismic vulnerability models consistent with the seismic hazard; and (4) calculating probability distributions of seismic-performance metrics rather than just mean values for a better characterization of the risk. This methodology will be applied to study the risk reduction and transfer effects on communities. Seismic risk-reduction will be achieved through implementation of seismic control devices to structures and risk-transfer is achieved through financing mechanisms, such as catastrophe bonds and other parametric models, used to carry over risk to risk-takers. The following objectives were defined: • The development and the assessment of site-specific seismic-hazard and general intensity-measure models that can incorporate prior physics-based knowledge and characteristics of recorded data; • The development models that can represent risky assets accurately by reducing the number of limiting assumptions, and study the effects of risk-reducing devices on the spatial distribution of losses in risky communities; • The assessment of traditional seismic-intensity measures used in Catastrophe Modelling, and propose novel seismic-intensity measures that can describe better the seismic hazard in case of catastrophic events; and • The development of risk-transfer seismic parameters that can be used to design sufficient and efficient payout triggers for risk-transfer financial products.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз