EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING & STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS, vol.43, no.6, pp.889-908, 2014 (SCI-Expanded)
This paper evaluates a recent record selection and scaling procedure of the authors that can determine the probabilistic structural response of buildings behaving either in the elastic or post-elastic range. This feature marks a significant strength on the procedure as the probabilistic structural response distribution conveys important information on probability-based damage assessment. The paper presents case studies that show the utilization of the proposed record selection and scaling procedure as a tool for the estimation of damage states and derivation of site-specific and region-specific fragility functions. The method can be used to describe exceedance probabilities of damage limits under a certain target hazard level with known annual exceedance rate (via probabilistic seismic hazard assessment). Thus, the resulting fragility models can relate the seismicity of the region (or a site) with the resulting building performance in a more accurate manner. Under this context, this simple and computationally efficient record selection and scaling procedure can be benefitted significantly by probability-based risk assessment methods that have started to be considered as indispensable for developing robust earthquake loss models. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.