Vulnerability evaluation of the strategic buildings in Algiers (Algeria): a methodology

Algeria is a country with a high seismic activity. During the last decade, many destructive earthquakes occurred, particularly in the northern part, causing enormous losses in human lives, buildings, and equipments. In order to reduce this risk in the capital and avoid serious damages to the strategic existing buildings, the government decided to invest in seismic upgrade, strengthening, and retrofitting of these buildings. To do so, seismic vulnerability study of this category of buildings has been considered. Structural analysis is performed based on a site investigation (inspection of the building, collecting data, materials characteristics, general conditions of the building, etc.) and existing drawings (architectural plans, structural design, etc.). The aim of these seismic vulnerability studies is to develop guidelines and a methodology for rehabilitation of existing buildings. This paper presents the methodology followed in our study and summarizes the vulnerability assessment and strengthening of one of the strategic buildings according to the new Algerian Seismic Design Code RPA 99/version 2003. As a direct application of this methodology, both static equivalent method and nonlinear dynamic analysis are performed and presented in this paper.     

Vulnerability assessment of reinforced concrete bridge structures in Algiers using scenario earthquakes

Algeria has an inheritance of more than 11,000 bridges, with approximately 5,000 road bridges of which more than 30 % have a high probability to be exposed to major earthquakes and serious damages in the future. Therefore, it is of great importance to retrofit the existing bridges and assess their seismic vulnerability and set a permanent monitoring survey to follow the change of their dynamic characteristics such as natural frequency and modal damping. The assessment of the seismic vulnerability of existing RC bridges was carried out based on the consistent and complete post earthquake survey after the Boumerdes earthquake. The information on the damaged existing RC bridges was investigated and evaluated by the authors. This paper presents a simple and efficient inspection method for the preliminary evaluation of the seismic vulnerability of existing bridge structures. To assess the seismic damage of 148 existing bridges, two seismic scenarios were carried out using “Khair al Din” and the “Zemmouri” faults that are capable to generate earthquakes with a maximum acceleration of 0.8g. The main findings of this study are summarized in this paper.