PERCEPTION AND COMMUNICATION OF SEIEMIC RISK

A web-based system is designed and implemented at cira.civil.sharif.edu as a risk communication tool to incentivize the society to take seismic risk mitigation measures. Risk denotes the expected monetary and social losses herein. The objective of this system is to raise the awareness of two groups of audience, i.e., the general public and policymakers, about the significant seismic risk in Iran. To address the general public, the system employs the notion of risk perception to put the results of sophisticated earthquake engineering risk analyses into perspective. The system also treats the epistemic uncertainty in the user input due to general public’s lack of technical knowledge through the notion of entropy in information theory. The object-oriented architecture of the system facilitates its steady growth to accommodate more advanced risk analysis techniques. To address policymakers, the system provides visualized regional risk estimates that identify the most vulnerable buildings and those with the highest rate of fatality. This is showcased by a comprehensive application that features the portfolio of 59 buildings at Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran