Smart cities to improve resilience of communities

This paper presents a new approach to predict the potential damage and physical impacts of an earthquake on the built environment. A new methodology for large-scale simulations within a seismic scenario are explored by evaluating multipurpose codes. In particular, a 3-D model of a virtual city is developed for evaluating the seismic effects at increasing intensities. Four different building sectors that provide essential functions to a community, including housing, education, business, and public services are considered. Once the buildings are integrated into the city, parallel simulations are applied to compute the system functionality following a disruptive scenario. Tri-linear elastoplastic backbone curve representative of the global shear behavior of each building is estimated considering the dominant modal shapes and building irregularities. Monte Carlo Simulations (MCS) are applied to take into account the epistemic uncertainties associated with geometry and mechanical properties within the range of observations. The nonlinear dynamic analyses are performed through SAP2000 Application Programming Interface (API) in order to assess the dynamic response of the buildings in an organized and automatic fashion. Accordingly, the city is mapped into different zones representative to the possibility of having different levels of damage (complete, extensive, moderate, and slight). This methodology supports decision-makers to explore the community response to a disruptive events, to develop monitoring and control strategies in urbanized areas, to plan better resilience-building and evacuation strategies.