ISCREANE: Improving Seismic resilience of Critical Facilities by Enhanced Assessment of Non-structural Elements

Recent earthquakes that have struck densely populated areas have demonstrated that the overall seismic performance of a critical building, in terms of economic losses and post-event functionality, is heavily influenced by the seismic performance of non-structural elements. ISCREANE aims to develop innovative methods, models, and computational tools with varying fidelity levels for the seismic assessment of non-structural elements. The project outcomes will be targeted at critical facilities such as schools, transportation facilities, and hospitals, benefitting highly seismic countries in Europe (i.e. Italy, Greece, Turkey) by providing enhanced tools for achieving increased seismic resilience of critical buildings. The project will yield three interconnected products: 1) a displacement-based assessment methodology for non-structural elements, which will enable simple yet accurate seismic assessment of nonstructural elements; 2) advanced tools for the improvement of component fragility functions and storey-loss functions for nonstructural elements, based on the displacement-based assessment methodology, for improved seismic loss assessment of buildings; and 3) a framework for the optimal and harmonized structural and non-structural seismic retrofit supporting engineers to make better risk-informed decisions when retrofitting a critical building. ISCREANE will leverage the probabilistic earthquake risk modelling expertise of the Supervisor and Host Institution and the expertise on seismic design and assessment of non-structural elements of the Fellow. Calibration and benchmarking will rely on data from Italy and Turkey, where strong relations between the Supervisor and local stakeholders ensure data availability, knowledge transfer, and meaningful community impact. By providing enhanced seismic assessment tools for non-structural elements, this project will ultimately provide earthquake prone societies with safer and more resilient critical buildings.