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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Earthquake Engineering
Volume 10 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2024.1524618

Review and characterization of the 2014 Orkney damage datasets for damage pattern mapping and fragility curve construction

Provisionally accepted
Thando Nqasha Thando Nqasha 1*Mayshree Singh Mayshree Singh 1Mulemwa Akombelwa Mulemwa Akombelwa 1Andrzej Kijko Andrzej Kijko 2
  • 1 University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
  • 2 University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The 2014 Orkney earthquake caused significant damage to unreinforced masonry buildings in the surrounding townships. After the earthquake, field surveys were conducted to assess the extent of damage in the affected areas. This study reviews data collected from the 2014 Orkney earthquake to investigate damage patterns, evaluate building safety for occupancy, and support fragility curve construction. Damage was quantified based on the European Macroseismic Scale (EMS-98) to assess building safety and conduct regression analysis. The results indicate that the collected data is suitable for investigating damage patterns and determining building safety for occupancy. However, it is not suitable for constructing fragility curves. Empirical fragility curves are typically developed using logistic regression, but this study found the data unsuitable for regression analysis due to sampling errors and limited data quantity. This study recommends the use of Ffirst-order approximation methods can be used to supplement the dataset, reducing sampling errors and increasing data quantity.

    Keywords: Seismic vulnerability assessment, 2014 Orkney earthquake, Earthquake damage, Unreinforced masonry buildings, fragility curves, South Africa

    Received: 07 Nov 2024; Accepted: 16 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Nqasha, Singh, Akombelwa and Kijko. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Thando Nqasha, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

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