A New Agent-Based Methodology for the Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Urban Areas

TL;DR

This paper introduces ABES, an agent-based software tool that models seismic impacts on urban areas by integrating GIS data and a Self-Organized Criticality framework, enabling cost-effective vulnerability assessment.

Contribution

The study presents a novel agent-based methodology combining GIS data and a criticality framework to simulate seismic effects on urban environments efficiently.

Findings

ABES effectively simulates seismic damage in urban areas.

The methodology provides a cost-efficient alternative to detailed structural analysis.

Case study on Avola demonstrates practical application and insights.

Abstract

In order to estimate the seismic vulnerability of a densely populated urban area, it would in principle be necessary to evaluate the dynamic behaviour of individual and aggregate buildings. These detailed seismic analyses, however, are extremely cost-intensive and require great processing time and expertise judgment. The aim of the present study is to propose a new methodology able to combine information and tools coming from different scientific fields in order to reproduce the effects of a seismic input in urban areas with known geological features and to estimate the entity of the damages caused on existing buildings. In particular, we present new software called ABES (Agent-Based Earthquake Simulator), based on a Self-Organized Criticality framework, which allows to evaluate the effects of a sequence of seismic events on a certain large urban area during a given interval of time. The integration of Geographic Information System (GIS) data sets, concerning both geological and urban information about the territory of Avola (Italy), allows performing a parametric study of these effects on a real context as a case study. The proposed new approach could be very useful in estimating the seismic vulnerability and defining planning strategies for seismic risk reduction in large urban areas