A Systematic Review on Different Approaches Used in the Development of Fragility Curves for Buildings

The intensity and the frequency of natural hazards have rapidly increased during past decades due to climate change. Due to reasons such as urbanization, vulnerable communities are being exposed to theses hazardous events, converting them to severe disasters. These disasters have cost millions of lives, affecting billions of people and resulting in trillions of economic losses. However, proper resilience, adaptation and mitigation measures can reduce the impacts of disasters. A cost-effective design of such measures requires knowledge of the hazard and the response of the properties with respect to the losses. The damage model, which is developed by combing hazard curve and fragility curve, is a tool that can be used for the above purpose. Conventional probabilistic hazard analysis can be employed to develop hazard curves. However, authors have followed different approaches to develop fragility curves due to the complexity. This study aims to review the different approaches on the scope of buildings to different disasters, identify their trends, classify the study areas and identify the relationships among the classified areas. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been employed in this study, following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews. A total of 1597 related records were identified from the Scopus and Web of Science scientific databases. After a structured screening and eligibility criteria, 135 records were selected to include in this study. Results revealed that analytical approaches had been employed in 55% of the selected studies. Also, 63% of the selected studies were based on earthquake-related disasters. Further, it was identified that most of the studies were aimed at reinforced concrete buildings. Furthermore, essential relationships among the classified areas and the future research opportunities in this thematic area were identified and are presented in this paper, which will direct the scholars who are aiming to develop fragility curves for buildings for different types of disasters.