A holistic approach for evaluating the contribution of system performance on resilience against earthquake in historic-commercial urban fabrics

Abstract The occurrence of earthquakes in historical urban fabrics with commercial value, such as traditional bazaars may have far-reaching cultural and socio-economic consequences. However, few comprehensive studies have been conducted so far on assessing their risk and resilience to earthquakes. Among the parameters affecting the resilience of such urban fabrics, system performance plays a key role, which has been addressed in this paper to evaluate its contribution on resilience of historical bazaars to earthquakes. To this end, a novel index-based model is developed by integrating resilience-related dimensions, indicators and sub-indicators. For this purpose, the cultural, historical, physical, socio-economic and organizational dimensions of resilience have been considered. Then, the effective indicators and sub-indicators amongst these five dimensions are determined and their importance is calculated by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Moreover, the qualitative parameters are quantified using fuzzy logic and included in the model. The proposed model can be used to estimate the system performance in traditional bazaars based on 5 dimensions, 17 indicators and 50 sub-indicators. In addition, by utilizing this model, the effective interventions to improve the resilience of different parts of bazaars can be assessed. The proposed model is applied in Tabriz traditional bazaar, as a world heritage, to determine the system performance and its impacts on seismic resilience. The results depicted the applicability of the model for assessment the system performance in traditional bazaars. This approach can be used in similar urban fabrics worldwide, by calibrating relevant parameters based on local conditions.