Stavroula Fotopoulou

CRISIS project aims at improving the disaster and emergency management through building a harmonized and efficient system for risk assessment of basic services and transport infrastructure in the targeted cross-border region. The main project activities include: (1) Cross-border multi hazard assessment; (2) Needs assessment; (3) Cross- border multi-risk assessment; and (4) Development of cross-border web base platform for risk assessment and management. The main stakeholder of the project is the civil protection and disaster management national authorities in the cross-border region where more than 500.000 inhabitants live, as well as all academic partner institutions that will share the knowledge and strengthen the mutual cooperation.

Evidence of past earthquakes highlighted the seismic vulnerability to buildings due to soil liquefaction and lateral spreading phenomena. Damage to buildings on a liquefiable site, especially on a gently sloping site, can be severe. The liquefied soil can undergo permanent lateral ground displacements as large as several meters in some cases, which can be severely disastrous to buildings. Recent physical tests and effective stress analyses of nonlinear dynamic soil-structure interaction (SSI) proved that simplified empirical processes are often improper for evaluating liquefaction-induced building settlements. A better understanding of the SSI effects is also essential in cases where the underlying soil is susceptible to liquefaction. In this respect, the interaction of the earthquake excitation and ground failure (i.e. soil liquefaction and lateral spreading) for buildings considering SSI is investigated herein. Typical low-code reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings of different heights with shallow spread footings on liquefiable level-ground or sloping soils subjected to ground shaking are considered. The direct SSI approach is implemented. Predictive relationships are established between the maximum normalized differential displacements (horizontal or settlement) and the permanent ground displacement (PGD) vector at the level of foundation for low-code RC frame buildings with shallow spread footings on soils with high liquefaction potential subjected to ground shaking. Finally, vulnerability is expressed in terms of fragility and vulnerability curves as well as in terms of fragility surfaces as a function of two intensity measures.

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether existing generic fragility curves for various residential building typologies can be safely applied for the vulnerability assessment of school buildings. We select three representative typologies of actual reinforced concrete (RC) school buildings in Thessaloniki, Greece and we conduct a detailed fragility analysis combining field inspection and structural monitoring data to advanced numerical modeling. Building-specific fragility and vulnerability curves are derived for the three school buildings based on 3D incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) of the calibrated numerical models. The comparisons of the developed curves with generic ones showed their significant differences.

Damages in port facilities during past seismic events have led to widespread direct and indirect losses, with serious impact on the economic, operational, and emergency management of the port itself and, as a consequence, on the related society. Ground shaking is among the most widespread sources of seismic damage to port structures and infrastructure, together with the induced phenomena principally associated with the liquefaction of loose, saturated soils that often prevail in coastal areas. This study presents a methodology for the seismic risk assessment of port facilities which considers the combined effects of ground shaking and liquefaction as well as various interdependencies among port elements, which affect the port’s operation and, consequently, the total risk impact. The methodology, based on either probabilistic or deterministic scenario-based approaches, is demonstrated through an application to the Thessaloniki port, one of the most important ports in Southeastern Europe and the largest transit-trade port in Greece. The systemic risk analysis of the port is carried out using as a performance indicator the reduction in the container and bulk cargo movements affected by the seismic performance of the piers, the waterfront, and container/cargo handling equipment, as well as their interaction with the seismic performance of the electric power system. Two different functionality analyses of the port system are performed, one basic and one less conservative alternative. The results of the probabilistic seismic risk assessment are illustrated in terms of annual probabilities of collapse and loss exceedance curves for each individual port component as well as normalized performance loss for the whole port system for the container and cargo terminal. For the scenario-based deterministic approach, the results are given in terms of risk maps presenting the spatial distribution of damages/losses for all components as well as in terms of the expected loss of performance of the port system. The proposed methodology may provide the basis for an efficient seismic risk management of ports. It may also be adjusted and applied to other port infrastructures in Greece and worldwide considering additional components, interactions among elements, and different earthquake induced hazards.