Analytical vulnerability functions for assessing fatalities in masonry buildings

The assessment of human losses and injuries due to earthquakes is critical for the development of risk reduction measures. Yet, most vulnerability studies have focused on the derivation of fragility functions for structural damage, neglecting the evaluation of the human impact. In this study, we implemented a fatality vulnerability assessment procedure based on advanced structural modelling, with an application to typical limestone and granite masonry buildings in Portugal. We performed nonlinear time‐history analysis on 3D numerical models whose characteristics were sampled from statistical models representing the geometric and mechanical properties of this type of construction. Engineering demand parameters, such as volume of loss and volume of survivable space, were estimated and converted into a fatality rate based on observations from past fatal earthquakes. We compared these vulnerability functions with other proposals from the literature in which conventional fragility functions are directly combined with collapse and fatality rates. Finally, the resulting vulnerability functions were tested for two earthquake scenarios for Portugal. The results from this study indicate that the conventional approach for fatality modelling tends to underestimate human losses for strong ground shaking due to the inability to account for catastrophic structural collapses. The fatality vulnerability functions developed in this work can be directly used in probabilistic seismic risk analysis or the assessment of earthquake scenarios.