Empirical fragility curves for houses in Chile using damage data from two earthquakes

Abstract

Strong seismic events frequently strike Chile. The last three significant events that caused considerable damage and losses are the 2010 (\({M}_{w}\) 8.8, Maule), 2014 (\({M}_{w}\) 8.2, Iquique), and 2015 (\({M}_{w}\) 8.3, Illapel) earthquakes. Therefore, reliable fragility curves are necessary to evaluate the threat of earthquakes to the built environment. This study aims to develop empirical fragility curves of Chilean houses using damage from the 2014 and 2015 earthquakes. The data from 9085 and 7431 damaged houses from the 2014 and 2015 earthquakes, respectively, was obtained by the government. The fragility curves were estimated for reinforced concrete, reinforced masonry, timber, and adobe houses. Additionally, the fragility curves were constructed using three different Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) maps to quantify the variation of the fragility parameters based on the selected PGA map and to identify which PGA map generates the highest correlation with observed damage. Additionally, fragility curves obtained in this study are compared with curves from other studies. The median \(\theta\) values of the fragility curves obtained in this study are larger than those from other reported studies.