Keywords: seismic safety index, structure damage mode, loss assessment, stiffness discontinuity, vertical/horizontal irregularity, transform structure.

The city of the case study presented in this paper is located in the Pan-Pearl-River-Delta areas of South China. It is an important port city and regional economic and trade centre. As a special economic zone in South China, it has experienced many miracles of high-rise buildings. According to tall building database, three of the 100 tallest buildings in the world are located in the case study area, including Shun Hing Square, Saige Square and the Shenzhen Special Zone Press Group Building. The safety requirements for urban tall buildings due to natural disasters or emergency events are increasing.

As the extent of urbanization increases, the urban structures are more and more vulnerable. The seismic fortification criterion for the city of the case study area is level 7, with a design basic acceleration of the ground motion of 0.05g to 0.1g. As the accumulation of the gross domestic product and the concentration of properties and population, the safety concerns for high-rise buildings have been the key factor for the sustainable development of this highly urbanized area.

In 2005, a seismic loss assessment system has been developed [1]. This GIS-based program package, named SafeCity, combines advanced analysis models, information techniques, and an urban information database based on thorough investigation of local and regional building inventory and site conditions. The subsystems for loss assessment and emergency management are integrated in the form of function modules: seismic hazard analysis, structural vulnerability simulation, economic and social loss estimation, etc. These modules provide various analysis results to fulfill user objectives, make it widely applicable for urban planning, land development, and emergency response management. Supported by SafeCity methodologies, a survey for high-rise buildings in the urban Pan-Pearl River Delta Areas has been conducted. Through simulation of the damage states of urban tall buildings under given seismic demands, the seismic safety assessment for the high-rise buildings has been completed. At the same time, the seismic safety index system has been established. The purpose is to assign the SSI to buildings to identify potential hazard high-rise buildings. For the out-of-line high-rise buildings, in addition to the considerations listed above, the numbers and the extent of irregular items should also be controlled. Construction methods for both the body and the foundation of the buildings should be carefully chosen. For some special out-of-line high-rise buildings (with very complex, very large shapes, or with special mixed structures), anti-seismic structural experiments are required. On this basis, the degree of life-safety hazard can be determined.

Disaster prevention or mitigation and emergency response is a complicated urban management mechanism. For sustainable economic and social development, it is expected to integrate disaster mitigation and rescuing resources in different departments, and to establish a united urban hazard forecast and emergency management system. In the last part of the paper, preferential strategies for disaster prevention or mitigation and emergency management for the city in the case study area has been provided.

1

Qiao, M.J., Chandler, A.M., "System Development for GIS-based Urban Loss Assessment in Low-to-Moderate Seismic Regions with a Case Study", in Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Computing, B.H.V. Topping, (Editor), Civil-Comp Press, Stirling, United Kingdom, paper 211, 2005. doi:10.4203/ccp.81.211

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