Development of A Fragility and Exposure Model for Palestine - Application to The City of Nablus

Earthquakes are highly catastrophic natural events, in terms of casualties and economic losses. Regions with a large percentage of non-seismically designed buildings and reduced urban planning are particularly vulnerable to seismic events. In such regions, it is nevertheless possible to mitigate seismic risk, given by the convolution of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The goal of this study is to propose simplified fragility and exposure models for the Palestinian region, specifically built upon local field surveys and data collection, whereas an existing state-of-the-art hazard model, specific for the Middle East region, was selected. The city of Nablus, a Palestinian commercial and cultural center in the northern West Bank, was chosen as a case-study. Special attention has been paid to the local construction practice of RC buildings, for different time periods. The identification of building types and their relative percentages within the in-built, has been conducted, leading to a preliminary taxonomy able to classify the most common structural systems. The outcome of this study enables the assessment of earthquake risk and rapid loss assessment at city and regional scale. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.