Estimating urban seismic damages and debris from building-level simulations: application to the city of Beirut, Lebanon

The estimation of seismic damages and debris at the urban scale—at a building-by-building level- is challenging for several reasons. First, commonly used methodologies for seismic damage estimation rarely take into account the local site effects, precisely at the building-level. Second, the available methods for debris estimation fail to estimate at the same time the quantity of debris generated per building according to its damage level and the distribution of the debris (extent and height) around buildings. Finally, the lack of comprehensive data on the building stock and the relevant building properties and their taxonomy further increases the complexity of assessing possible earthquake consequences at an urban scale. This paper addresses these challenges and proposes improvements to the assessment of seismic damages and debris from building-level simulations, along with the development of a 3D building model based on satellite images and heterogeneous data. These developments, applied to the city of Beirut, Lebanon, highlight the control of the site effects on the seismic damage’s spatial distribution throughout the city and the large volume and extent of debris to be expected in the city for a strong earthquake.