Insights from existing earthquake loss assessment research in Croatia

Seismic risk management has two main technical aspects: to recommend the construction of high-performance buildings and other structures using earthquake-resistant designs or evaluate existing ones, and to prepare emergency plans using realistic seismic scenarios. An overview of seismic risk assessment methodologies in Croatia is provided with details regarding the components of the assessment procedures: hazard, vulnerability and exposure. For Croatia, hazard is presented with two maps and it is expressed in terms of the peak horizontal ground acceleration during an earthquake, with the return period of 95 or 475 years. A standard building typology catalogue for Croatia has not been prepared yet, but a database for the fourth largest city in Croatia is currently in its initial stage. Two methods for earthquake vulnerability assessment are applied and compared. The first is a relatively simple and fast analysis of potential seismic vulnerability proposed by Croatian researchers using damage index (DI) as a numerical value indicating the level of structural damage, while the second is the Macroseismic method.