Vulnerability Assessment of Buildings against Earthquake Case Study: Qadghoon Neighborhood, Borujerd, Iran

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The buildings, as the main and most abundant elements in cities, have great importance in two aspects of assessing and mitigating the vulnerability at disaster incidence. On the other hand, the emphasis of post disaster reconstruction engineers on the single-scale building has compounded the importance of building in terms of planning to reduce the damages of disaster incidence. METHODS: This quantitative-descriptive study was conducted documentary studies and extraction of priority indicators determining the degree of vulnerability. This research aimed to assess the vulnerability of Qadghoon buildings, one of the historical neighborhoods of Borujerd, Lorestan Province, Iran, which was damaged and reconstructed after the 2007 earthquake, for more than a decade. FINDINGS: The data obtained from the field study of this neighborhood were analyzed after entering into GIS software and weighted by Analytic Hierarchy Process-Delphi. The provided maps were evaluated and the vulnerability score obtained from indicators was weighted by the above method. Finally, the score of vulnerabilities in neighborhoods in the range of 0-5 Likert scale was calculated at 3.5208, which indicated a moderate increase in vulnerability. CONCLUSION: After the examination of actions taken in the post-earthquake reconstruction process, reduction of vulnerability evaluation was low. This result indicated the failure of operators to reduce the vulnerability on a scale of buildings, despite the large opportunities and resources. In addition to lessons from the present study, some suggestions were provided to improve the process of reconstruction after possible disasters in the future. Keywords: Borujerd; Earthquake; Qadghoon Neighborhood; Single-scale of Building; Vulnerability Assessment.