CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

2.1 Earthquakes

According to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS,

n.d.), an earthquake is a phenomenon of weak to violent shaking of the ground
produced by the sudden movement of rock materials below the earth’s surface or by
volcanic or magmatic activity. Earthquakes originate in the tectonic plate boundaries.
When an earthquake strikes, certain factors are observed to describe the earthquake.
The focus is a point inside the earth where the earthquake started, sometimes called
the hypocenter, while the point on the surface of the earth directly above the focus is
called the epicenter. There are two ways by which researchers can measure the
strength of an earthquake: magnitude and intensity. Magnitude is proportional to the
energy released by an earthquake at the focus. It is calculated from earthquakes
recorded by an instrument called a seismograph. Intensity, on the other hand, is the
strength of an earthquake as perceived and felt by people in a certain locality. It is a
rating with increasing numerical quantity based on the relative effects to people, the
environment and the structures in a specific area. Generally, the value is higher when
the location is near the epicenter. The intensity of an earthquake in the Philippines is
quantified using the PHIVOLCS Earthquake Intensity Scale (PEIS).

The occurrence of earthquakes is unpredictable, and it brings disasters. According to

the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA, 2012), it further triggers other
disasters such as landslides, avalanches, flash floods, fires, and huge, destructive
ocean waves or tsunamis, which in effect pose a great danger to people, property
health, and the environment. Earthquakes strike suddenly without warning and then
followed by smaller earthquakes or aftershocks or even preceded by foreshocks.

Due to recent earthquakes and the country’s inclusion in the Pacific Ring of Fire
region urged several studies even at the local level. The studies conducted are
particularly on seismic risk analysis of human casualties and structural damage in
areas near fault lines or areas having significant seismic danger. Baylon and Garcia
(2014) conducted a study on historical structures after the Bohol earthquake in 2013
to assess the vulnerability and strength of these types of structures against seismic
activities. Using a net present value approach, they determined the financial viability

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of the retrofit measure. Lo and Oreta (2013) conducted seismic risk mapping at a
micro-scale level was conducted in Barangay Carmen, Cagayan de Oro City. This
study developed and applied a tool for quantifying the Seismic Risk Index (SRi) of a
community at a micro-scale. The SRi was taken as a function of various parameters
including the severity of an earthquake in the area, population density, structural
vulnerability, as well as other physical and socio-economic factors. The results of the
study showed some zones in the barangay with high seismic risk. Arquiza et al.
(2017) conducted a further study to estimate the number of casualties due to physical
damages of the structures in the zones of Barangay Carmen.

2.2 Public School Buildings on Earthquakes

Structures and buildings are subject to risk during the occurrence of calamities and
disasters such as earthquakes. Humans are vulnerable and prone to hazard inside the
buildings as the sudden failure of those structures due to an earthquake will threaten
safety and life. According to the United Nations Internal Strategy for Disaster
Reduction (UNISDR, 2009), essentially – and is well established from countless
previous earthquake incidents – buildings are the main killers when earthquakes strike
which is why constructing resilient buildings in earthquake-prone zones is vital. Some
structures that have high risk are buildings with large occupancy such as public-
school buildings. These buildings are very important in every place because these
serve as the hub for learning and education and even centers for evacuation whenever
there are calamities.

Figure 2.1 A Damaged School Building in M’lang, North Cotabato (Source:

MindaNews photo by Jules Benitez)

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Around the world, several earthquakes have caused the collapse of many school
buildings resulting in death and injury. As reported by López et al. (as cited in
Shehada and Shurrab, n.d.) the 2001 Bhuj earthquake in India killed 1002 students
and teachers, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan killed about 19,000 children,
most of them in collapses of school buildings, and the 2008 Sichuan, earthquake in
China destroyed about 6,898 schools killing thousands of students and teachers.
Reported in a New York Times news archive in the year 1970, a major earthquake
registering on the Richter scale at 7.7 magnitude killed at least 258 people on Monday
on Cabanatuan, Philippines, including 48 children whose school collapsed and 210
others caught in stampedes or falling buildings. In Muntinlupa, Philippines the Values
Education building of Pedro E. Diaz High School was demolished in 2016 because it
lied directly above the West Valley Fault. During the recent Cotabato earthquakes in
2019, over 1,000 schools sustained damage according to DepEd reports (Hernando-
Malipot, 2019) resulting in the dysfunction of normal class schedules and even caused
injuries to some students. According to the estimates, the resulted damage would cost
the government at least P3.2 billion for repair and reconstruction.

According to United States Geological Survey (USGS, 2012), the well-known

statement "earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do" highlights the importance of
making the communities more earthquake-resilient. Clearly, public school buildings
are not exempted from this rule. To do this, seismic assessment of schools is
necessary to determine its vulnerability against earthquake hazards. Shehada and
Shurrab (n.d.) introduced a new approach for seismic assessment of existing school
buildings. The proposed approach requires minimum human effort as it can be
implemented by a small team of technical construction background. On the other
hand, Brizuela and Oreta (2013) designed a computer-aided Seismic Hazard Risk
Assessment tool to promote safe school communities. The software has the capability
of organizing and storing school building information, assessing the risk of every
building against seismic hazard, ranking and prioritizing the most vulnerable building
in the campus, summarizing the vulnerability of a particular campus and storing
assessment and risk indices in a database that will enable ease of access and updating.
Chan et al. (2015) locally studied the nine (9) central schools in the Division of
Cagayan de Oro City using a seismic risk index tool previously developed by (Oreta
and Brizuela, 2013). Each building of the schools selected were scored with values for

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exposure, vulnerability, and hazard factors and maps were then generated from those
points. Schools were then ranked subject to seismic risk.

2.3 Seismic Capacity and Demand of Buildings

The design of structures today follows seismic codes to ensure safety against
earthquake hazards. Aside from the existing codes, there are different methodologies
to design and even assess a building’s structural capacity. One widely used
methodology is the performance-based seismic design. According to Panyakapo
(2008), this method uses the capacity spectrum technique to determine the
performance point of the structure. Two important elements are used in this method as
proposed in Applied Technology Council-40 (ATC-40) namely seismic demand and
capacity. Seismic demand is the numerical representation of a recorded earthquake
ground motion. The selection of the ground motion data to be used depends on the
researchers. On the other hand, seismic capacity represents the inelastic behavior of a
structure usually shown in terms of forces against displacement or spectral
acceleration against spectral displacement. Nonlinear static pushover analysis can be
used to generate a structure’s seismic capacity or capacity curve. The goal of the
capacity spectrum method is to determine the performance of the structure which is
basically the intersection of the capacity and demand curves in relation to the
properties of the structure.

2.4 Pushover Analysis

The Nonlinear Static Pushover Analysis (PA) is a relatively new seismic assessment
method which has no strict or solid theoretical base. According to (Themelis, 2008),
its main assumption on a structure subjected to earthquakes is that the structure’s
response is controlled by the first mode shape or fundamental mode of vibration, or
by the first few mode shapes. This then remains constant throughout the entire
response of the structure from its elastic state to inelastic. Pushover Analysis’
assumption provides the capability to transform a dynamic problem into a static one.
Accordingly, pushover analysis gives a better understanding and more accurate
seismic evaluation of buildings as the progression of damage and failure can be traced
(Kumar et al., 2014). According to Leslie (2013), it is a simple method that can help
demonstrate how progressive failure in buildings really occurs and identify the mode
of final failure. Putting it simply, pushover analysis is a non-linear analysis procedure

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to estimate the strength capacity of a structure beyond its elastic limit (meaning limit
state) up to its ultimate strength in the post-elastic range. In this process, the method
also predicts potential weak areas of the structure by keeping track of the sequence of
damages of each member in the structure using what are called ‘hinges’ they hold.

Figure 2.2 Schematic Depiction of Static Pushover Analysis used in the Capacity
Spectrum Method (excerpted from FEMA 440)

In this method, a structure is subjected to gravity loading and a monotonic

displacement-controlled lateral load pattern, which continuously increases through
elastic and inelastic behavior until an ultimate condition is reached. The process of
pushover analysis is shown in Figure 2.2 above. According to Nassirpour (2018), the
lateral load may represent the range of base shear induced by earthquake loads. The
loading can be configured to become proportional to the mode shapes, distribution of
mass along with building height, or another practical means. The analysis generates a
static-pushover curve which plots a strength-based parameter against the structural
response in terms of deflection. This can then be combined with an acceleration-
displacement response spectrum data which is the demand curve for further seismic
analysis of the structure.

Several studies conducted used pushover analysis as the main or initial tool to assess a
structure’s seismic capacity. Different methods and approaches of pushover analysis
were also explored in many studies. The study of Çavdar A., Çavdar O. & Bayraktar
(2018) evaluated the seismic performance of a reinforced-concrete shear-wall
structure using nonlinear methods which included the pushover analysis. They
selected a collapsed building and used it as a basis to test the reliability of the methods
used under different seismic records. Cimellaro, Giovine, and Lopez-Garcia (2014)
proposed the bidirectional pushover analysis (BPA) method to overcome the current
limitations of the conventional pushover analysis. The study estimated the response of
irregular structures to earthquakes. It was found out that the results of the proposed

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method matched those given by nonlinear response history analysis. On the other
hand, Kumar et al. (2014) proposed a probabilistic method to assess the seismic
performance of a reinforced-concrete structure based on pushover analysis with
consideration to its uncertainties.

2.5 Seismic Fragility Curves

The seismic fragility of a structure according to Kostov (2000) is defined as the

conditional probability of failure at a given value of seismic response parameters such
as maximum acceleration, velocity displacement, spectral acceleration, effective
acceleration, etc. Basically, it is the curve showing the relationship between an
earthquake intensity and damage grade in terms of the conditional cumulative
probability of reaching a certain damage state. There are two ways of defining seismic
fragilities and these are in terms of global ground motion parameter or in terms of
local response parameter. The objective of a seismic fragility evaluation is to estimate
the corresponding peak ground motion acceleration value for which the seismic
response of a structure exceeds the capacity resulting in failure. Figure 2.3 below
shows two examples of fragility curves based on peak ground acceleration and
spectral displacement.

Figure 2.3 Sample Fragility Functions (excerpted from Application of Fragility

Analysis on Reinforced Concrete Buildings UCL)

2.6 Studies on Seismic Fragility Curves

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Several studies were conducted regarding the seismic fragilities of different types of
structures. In a study done by Spyridis (n.d.), the seismic vulnerability of different
types of dam structures was evaluated pointing out the complexities and the
consequences associated with earthquakes. To quantify vulnerability, fragility curves
were generated. Another study by Aljawhari (n.d.) was conducted to investigate the
seismic performance of several RC frames when subjected to earthquake sequences
consisting of mainshocks and aftershocks. The study created fragility curves which
gave the probability of attaining various damage states as well as vulnerability
functions to quantify the expected losses. The study found that aftershocks did not
show any pronounced effect on the special-code frames since the simulated
mainshocks caused slight or no damage initially.

More on theoretical research, a study by Lupoi et al. (2006) presented a method for
the evaluation of the seismic fragility curves of structures. The proposed method is
based on simulations of several dynamic analyses to create a probabilistic
characterization of the ground motion data. The results showed that the fragility
curves derived using the method are comparable with the curves generated using the
Monte Carlo simulation.

Seismic fragility curves of bridges were also given attention. Shinozuka et al. (2000)
conducted a comparison of fragility curves by the nonlinear static procedure with
those by time-history analysis and found out that the agreement is excellent for the
state of at least minor damage but not as good for the state of major damage where
nonlinear effects clearly play a crucial role. Baylon et al. (2015) developed seismic
fragility curves of the LRT-1 South Extension piers under shear failure when
subjected to ground acceleration of different earthquakes using pushover and time
history analyses. A similar approach was also used by Cupay et al. (2019) in
developing the seismic fragility curves of piers of the Kagay-an Bridge. They also
evaluated the flood fragility curves of the piers against the forces from flood events in
Cagayan de Oro City. Their research bilaterally assessed the bridge structure against
two natural hazards.

A study on public schools in the Philippines was conducted by Wang (n.d.) in which
the focuses were on various retrofitting strategies and its fragility and loss analysis for
existing school buildings in the Philippines. Then, a retrofitting study was

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implemented on an index building seismically designed using the data from site
investigation in the Philippines. Pushover analysis, fragility and loss analysis were
then used to determine the effects of applied retrofitting strategies.

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