Seismic risk assessment of buildings in the highly populated earthquake-prone areas of the UAE

This paper briefly discusses the methodology and preliminary results of a comprehensive research project for the vulnerability assessment of the existing building inventory in a highly populated seismically active area in the UAE. The focus is on the shoreline area from Dubai to Ajman due to its valuable building inventory, high population and vulnerability to earthquakes originated from different seismic sources. The study includes pre-code and modern multi-story buildings as well as emergency facilities due to their vital role in the recovery period following an earthquake. The building inventory in the selected study area is collected and classified, and a wide range of representative structures, ranging from 2 to 100 stories, are designed and idealized for dynamic response simulations. Extensive incremental dynamic analyses (IDAs) are conducted for the reference structures using a verified inelastic analysis platform and ground motions with increasing severity to assess the impacts of anticipated seismic scenarios. The results confirm the significance of considering different earthquake scenarios for the vulnerability assessment of the diverse building stock in the study area. The derived vulnerability functions in this study are prepared for the direct integration with a broad loss estimation system for the UAE and similar regions.