A Rapid Visual Screening Procedure to Evaluate Seismic Risk of Non-structural Elements in Critical Facilities

Non-structural elements (NSEs) represent most of the total construction cost of typical buildings. A significant portion of the total losses in recent earthquakes worldwide has been attributed to damage to NSEs, demonstrating the need for the harmonization of the seismic performance of the NSEs and of the seismic force-resisting systems. Unfortunately, lack of research results on the seismic performance of NSEs available in the public domain has, and continues to hamper, the development of efficient performance-based seismic design methods for buildings. Even though recent research continues to develop new and improved seismic design methodologies for NSEs, significant efforts are still required, particularly for existing building for which seismic mitigation detailing for NSEs are generally not adopted. To deal with this issue, and to reduce non-structural related seismic losses in existing buildings, simplified tools, which allow to quantify the seismic risk at which NSEs are prone, should be developed. This paper presents a rapid visual screening procedure useful to perform a large-scale classification of the seismic vulnerability of NSEs installed in critical facilities. The methodology is based on questionnaire forms that are used to calculate a nonstructural index and to identify the most vulnerable NSE category. The methodology has been applied to some case study buildings focusing the attention on critical facilities.