A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Post-Earthquake Fire Performance of Buildings

Kim, Jin Kyung

Etd

A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Post-Earthquake Fire Performance of Buildings

Public

Earthquakes can severely damage building structural and nonstructural systems and components, including active and passive fire protection and egress systems. If the occurrence of such damage is not anticipated at the design stage, the impact of a post-earthquake fire could be significant, as building and fire protection systems may not perform as expected. Unfortunately, even though both the seismic and fire engineering communities utilize performance-based approaches for designing well-performing and resilient buildings under earthquake and fire hazards respectively, each discipline carries out their associated building performance analyses independently. As a result, fire protection engineers have little guidance as to how to estimate structural and nonstructural building systems and component damage as inputs to help them develop post-earthquake building fire scenarios. To help bridge this gap, a conceptual framework is developed that illustrates how performance-based approaches for earthquake and fire engineering analysis and design can become more integrated for the development of post-earthquake fire scenarios. Using a fictional building in an earthquake prone area as an example, the conceptual framework is implemented to show (a) how earthquake-induced damage to building fire protection systems could be estimated using an earthquake performance assessment tool, (b) how the damage estimates might be translated into physical damage parameters in a way that is meaningful for developing post-earthquake building fire scenarios, (c) how the damage states might be implemented in terms of fire and egress modeling input parameters, and (d) how this information could be used to and compare post-earthquake building fire safety performance to a normal(undamaged) building fire conditions.

Creator