Seismic Vulnerability and Property Losses to the Portuguese Industrial Steel Building Stock

Abstract

Industry plays a key role in the economy of a country, people welfare and socio-economic resilience to natural disasters. Earthquakes are known to have damaging impacts on industrial property and activity, oftentimes resulting in costly structural and non-structural losses to industrial buildings, business closure, production failure and job losses. Notwithstanding this fact, the industrial building stock has been continuously excluded from seismic risk models developed for Portugal as it is usually assumed that industrial buildings are expected to withstand strong earthquakes due to their lightweight and design governed by wind loads. The aim of this paper is thus to give a first contribution to the assessment of the seismic vulnerability and property losses of the existing Portuguese industrial steel building stock. Both losses to structural and non-structural components and industry-specific contents, such as production equipment and machinery, are taken into account. The expected direct industrial property losses for a probability of exceedance of 10 % in 50 years for mainland Portugal are herein estimated.