A benchmark city for seismic resilience assessment

The concept of seismic resilience has received significant attention from academia and industry during the last two decades. Different frameworks have been proposed for seismic resilience assessment of engineering systems at different scales(e.g., buildings, bridges, communities, and cities). Testbeds including Centerville virtual community(CVC), Memphis testbed(MTB), and the virtual city of Turin, Italy(VC-TI) have been developed during the last decade. However, the resilience assessment results of Chinese cities still require calibration based on a unified evaluation model. Therefore, a geographic information system(GIS)-based benchmark model of a medium-sized city located in the southeastern coastal region of China was developed. The benchmark city can be used to compare existing assessment frameworks and calibrate the assessment results. The demographics, site conditions, and potential hazard exposure of the benchmark city, as well as land use and building inventory are described in this paper. Data of lifeline systems are provided, including power, transportation, water, drainage, and natural gas distribution networks, as well as the locations of hospitals, emergency shelters, and schools. Data from past earthquakes and the literature were obtained to develop seismic fragility models, consequence models, and recovery models, which can be used as basic data or calibration data in the resilience assessment process. To demonstrate the completeness of the data included in the benchmark city, a case study on the accessibility of emergency rescue after earthquakes was conducted, and the preliminary results were discussed. The ultimate goal of this benchmark city is to provide a platform for calibrating resilience assessment results and to facilitate the development of resilient cities in China.