Computing seismic vulnerability of residential buildings: A case study of Jeddah city in Saudi Arabia

Increased development and urbanization of a city may cause higher risk from seismic events, even in areas of moderate seismicity. This study takes the case of the City of Jeddah, which is expanding rapidly in a number of buildings and population. The study addresses the rapid evaluation of residential buildings using the Rapid Evaluation Method (REM) to assess building stock to determine hazard and computing vulnerability, with the scoring method from FEMA 155. Two districts were selected for investigation based on cluster analysis applied to population and building data from the municipal office. One district is a modern developing urbanized area; the other is a more traditional area. This selection offers the possibility of comparing the vulnerability of buildings built according to different seismic codes and to make assumptions about the rest of the city based on typical structures of districts. The basic structural score was determined considering the building structure and moderate seismicity of the region using score modifiers. The results show the different levels of vulnerability and areas where intervention is needed. The method can be applied for further analysis of the city.