Seismic Damage Prediction of Buildings Using Fuzzy Logic, The Case of Ambarlı Neighborhood at Avcılar

The Kocaeli 1999 earthquake caused great damage of buildings in Istanbul, Avcılar district was the most affected region than any other nearby districts even though they are located further near to the epicenter. In Ambarlı Neighborhood at Avcılar, where the total number of buildings at the time of earthquake was 1338, damage assessment work was carried out on a total of 505 buildings. As a result, 222 buildings were categorized damaged to varying degrees which forms 16.59% of the total buildings in the area. Damage due to an earthquake is an important element of the earthquake risk concept, especially for areas previously suffered critical hazard. Therefore, for such situations with relatively complicated condition involving certain degrees of uncertainty, further investigations using simple but effective tools can lead to better understanding of such events and the consequences. In this study, a model has been developed using Fuzzy Logic method considering four parameters; Ground motion, ground condition, building number of floors and building age. The degree of damage is obtained as a result of the analysis. A post-earthquake damage database of reinforced concrete buildings within a selected zone at Ambarlı neighborhood due to 1999 Kocaeli earthquake has been used to investigate the applicability of the proposed method. The model results were found to reasonably presenting the distribution of damage of the buildings in the area when compared with the recorded damage distribution. The results also show that the model is capable of predicting damage distribution of the existing reinforced concrete buildings against possible earthquakes of large magnitude.