Disaster Prevention and Management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of building codes in earthquake risk mitigation in Taiwan.

Design/methodology/approach – Using probabilistic risk analysis tools with available data, this study assesses the exceedance probability of extensive damage limit for general buildings in their 50-year useful lives. The buildings were classified into 15 categories according to their construction materials and building height. Then, the effects of construction materials, building height and construction years are detected.

Findings – The exceedance probabilities of extensive damage limit for all of the investigated buildings in their 50-year useful lives are on the order of 10^-2. The effect of construction materials and building height on seismic risk of buildings is decreasing with the development of a seismic design code. Significant discrepancy of seismic risk still exists among some buildings.

Research limitations/implications – Seismic risk analysis requires quite restrictive statistical idealizations for the relevant probabilistic terms in the mathematical formulation. The problem of imperfect simplification and lack of sufficient empirical data has shown the research needs for improvements of seismic risk assessment. The questions of what constitutes acceptable risk for various performance levels and how safe is safe enough remain context-specific.

Originality/value – Although probabilistic risk analysis provides a tool for quantifying the probability of structural failure, current earthquake-resistant design procedures do not relate performance levels to probability. The paper explores some probability information for current earthquake-resistant design for general buildings during their 50-year useful lives and the information may provide some valuable information for future code calibration.