A novel urban seismic resilience assessment method considering the weighting of post-earthquake loss and recovery time

Earthquakes impose substantial threats to the built environment of urban communities. To re-duce the catastrophic consequences of earthquakes, there is an urgent need to build seismic re-silient cites that can better resist seismic damage and enable a rapid post-disaster recovery. This paper gives the definition of urban seismic resilience, and establishes a seismic resilience assess-ment indicator system for urban built environment that integrates engineering systems, non -engineering systems and secondary disaster risk. A novel urban seismic resilience assessment method based on post-earthquake loss and recovery time is then developed to assess engineering system seismic resilience. Post-earthquake loss is divided into casualties and functionality loss. Adjustment coefficients are applied to account for the effects of non-engineering systems and sec-ondary disaster risks on urban seismic resilience. The analytical hierarchy process is employed to calculate the weights of individual engineering systems. In the end, a city located in southern China is taken as an example to illustrate the proposed method. The assessment results suggest that the urban seismic resilience grade is II, which means that the city can effectively resist possi-ble future earthquake disasters.

Automated summary

Earthquakes pose significant threats to urban communities' built environment. To reduce the catastrophic consequences, it is urgently needed to build seismic resilient cities that can better withstand seismic damage and recover rapidly post-disaster. This paper defines urban seismic resilience, establishes an assessment indicator system, and presents a novel assessment method based on post-earthquake loss and recovery time. The method incorporates engineering systems, non-engineering systems, and secondary disaster risks. A case study in a southern Chinese city demonstrates that it effectively resists possible future earthquake disasters.