Research Brief: Creating Customized Fragility Curves for Resilient Building

Abstract

Fragility curves, which are a statistical tool that represent the probability of exceeding a certain level of structural damage due to various forces applied to a building, are used to assess anticipated building performance. For new construction and retrofitting alike, designers and builders need to understand the risks their buildings face from environmental loads such as hurricanes, floods, or earthquakes. The role of the fragility curve is important when building for resilience, but it is often overlooked due the challenge of applying it early in the design and process. The anticipated damage estimation from fragility curves has far reaching effects downstream in construction and maintenance over the building lifetime, but fragility curves are not readily generated for each building and each loading scenario. Instead, databases like those used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Hazus software rely on a set number of building types and loading classes. The ability to construct on-demand customizable fragility curves for a particular building with a particular load or maintenance level across the building’s lifetime is still an open problem.