LOS ANGELES INVENTORY OF NONDUCTILE CONCRETE BUILDINGS FOR ANALYSIS OF SEISMIC COLLAPSE RISK HAZARDS

Abstract

Nonductile concrete buildings arguably represent the greatest seismic life safety hazard in many urban centers world-wide because of their collapse potential. This paper documents the development of an inventory to evaluate the risk from the approximately 1600 potentially nonductile concrete buildings in the City of Los Angeles. Using state-of-the-art spatial databases, publicly available online resources, and building inspections, we record the geographic distribution of these buildings as well as their general characteristics with respect to structural configurations and usage. We describe the diverse array of data sources used to develop the inventory, which provides information on building size, age, type, usage, and ownership type. We particularly emphasize the data collection methodologies developed and utilized for this project and the significant challenges associated with data collection of this type. This information is being utilized in ongoing collapse risk studies related to nonductile concrete construction in Los Angeles and to guide a testing/simulation program that will ultimately lead to more accurate loss estimation tools.