Simulating and visualising indoor seismic damage: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Earthquakes pose a significant risk to human lives because they can cause severe damage to structural and non-structural components of buildings, thereby harming building occupants. Accordingly, reducing earthquakes’ social, economic and environmental losses requires significant effort. Indoor seismic damage, which refers to damage caused by earthquakes inside buildings, such as falling objects, broken furniture and collapsed walls, is especially important for assessment and mitigation because it directly affects building occupants. Therefore, understanding and mitigating indoor seismic damage have become necessary. Many damage assessment tools have been introduced and adopted to assess the impact of earthquakes on buildings. Digital technologies can be essential in simulating and visualising earthquake damage, providing realistic, interactive and immersive experiences for different purposes and stakeholders. This systematic literature review critically aims to investigate existing approaches and methods for simulating and visualising indoor seismic damage to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research, identify knowledge gaps and offer insights into the future. Thus, a conceptual framework was developed, which integrates essential aspects, including methods and tools, to develop seismic damage simulation and visualisation. This objective was achieved by systematically reviewing 20 articles published between 2017 and 2023 to answer several research questions on the type of application, software, interoperability challenges and hardware adopted to visualise the damages.