Establishing analytical vulnerability information for non-linear low-rise (1-to 3-storey) school building models

Earthquakes pose substantial structural damage to infrastructural facilities across the globe, particularly in developing countries. This paper focuses on establishing the structural vulnerability of reinforced concrete (RC) school buildings in Kashmir region of Pakistan. Vulnerability assessment plays a substantial role in identifying risk-prone structures and prioritizing structural intervention efforts. Statistical analyses for a database of school buildings were conducted to develop the statistical distributions of important structural parameters including total structural heights, number of bays, and cross-sectional dimensions of primary structural members. Afterwards, correlation analysis was performed to check for their interdependence. Acute insights were obtained and subsequently, 3 nonlinear representative models for 1-, 2-, and 3-story schools' representative model was found to be highly susceptible with maximum collapse probability of 0.46. This study is the first of its kind in Kashmir region that statistically incorporates the information for developing representative analytical school building models instead of taking a discreet structure to characterize the whole stock. The presented work establishes critical insights into the features of school buildings' stock in Kashmir and demonstrates the representative models' capability in predicting structural vulnerability.