Methodology and applications for the benefit cost analysis of the seismic risk reduction in building portfolios at broadscale

This article presents a methodology for an estimate of the benefit cost ratio of the seismic risk reduction in buildings portfolio at broadscale, for a world region, allowing comparing the results obtained for the countries belonging to that region. This methodology encompasses (1) the generation of a set of random seismic events and the evaluation of the spectral accelerations at the buildings location; (2) the estimation of the buildings built area, the economic value, as well as the classification in structural typologies; (3) the development of vulnerability curves for each typology; (4) the estimation of the annual average loss of the buildings portfolio in the current conditions as well as in the case of a hypothetical structural intervention. The benefit cost ratio is estimated as the difference between the estimates of the present value of these two annual average losses, divided by the retrofitting costs. This methodology has been applied to the portfolio of public schools of 14 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, for evaluating the feasibility of the seismic risk reduction at a national scale.