Türkiye is a country at high risk of natural disasters, mainly earthquakes. The experiences learned from the past in terms of human and material damage linked to earthquakes and mainly towards healthcare systems, such as those of August 17, 1999, and even the recent Kahramanmaraş earthquake of February 6, 2023, have resulted in enormous life losses and a large amount of financial loss (e.g.: 4.3 billion USD from only the Kahramanmaraş earthquake of February 6, 2023, ref: Minister of Health of Türkiye).

Among other facilities, healthcare buildings are of great importance regarding natural hazards, specifically earthquakes. Despite many investigations in science resilience and its applications to the earthquake resistance of hospital buildings, uncertainties and many other factors related to earthquake events continue to cause much damage to both hospitals’ structural and non-structural elements. In addition, we live in an increasingly uncertain space where the past no longer provides us with an exact guide to how the future will behave. Therefore, it’s essential to take the subject cyclically.

Earthquake Resilience Theories and Practice in Türkiye.

In Türkiye, since the advent of the first earthquake and building code (TS-500) to the recent update named the TEBC-2018, there have been many investigations and applications of these codes to hospital building analysis, design, and performance-based design and assessments. Like building codes, there are also many guidelines, such as the FEMA standards, that have addressed the seismic performance assessment of buildings with different performance measurement parameters. It’s the case of the FEMAP-58 of the Applied Technology Council edition 2002 and updated 2016 regarding the seismic performance of buildings in terms of financial loss, repair time, injuries, unsafe placarding etc. In Türkiye, the implementation of FEMA-P58’s methodologies (Intensity-based, scenario-based, and time-based assessments) and its tools with building code requirements, such as the TEBC-2018, is in its infancy. During the last (1) year and through the CDRI fellowship program 2022-2023, important investigations have been query-out towers health systems seismic resilient in Kocaeli’s city of Türkiye. Firstly, the urban seismic hazard of the city has been assessed and the related risk to hospital buildings is evaluated. The Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) of the GEM foundation has been employed to investigate the regional seismic hazard and corresponding risk to hospital buildings in Kocaeli’s city. For comparative purposes in the risk output, two different single GMPE equations have been used within the hazard models for the hazard assessment. The resulting hazard maps confirm the high seismicity risk of the Kocaeli’s region.  Consequently, while the resulting risk to the hospital buildings in terms of structural loss is not significant and should only require some retrofitting mainly for the DD2 earthquake level (with a recurrence period of 475 years), the risk level is significant regarding the DD1 earthquake level (with a recurrence period of 2475 years).

The seismic performance assessment of hospital buildings from diverse national and international organizations and institutions from the 6 February 2023 Turkiye-Kahramanmaraş earthquake with Mw7.6 has led the Turkish government to establish new regulations regarding health infrastructures. Especially with the new rules of designing healthcare infrastructures with DD1 earthquake level, it is believed that this research study would be valuable and useful to any decision maker and earthquake-resilient stakeholder to better plan for a future healthcare infrastructure seismic resilient strategy.

The FEMA-P58 addresses three seismic performance assessment methodologies. The Turkish Earthquake Building Cod TEBC2018 and the ASCE/SEI 41/13 have been used for comparative purposes in the structural response analysis results. The regional seismic hazard and the related risk to hospital buildings in Kocaeli’s city have been realized using the open-source engine OpenQuake of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) foundation. With the results of the risk assessment, three buildings of the Derince State Hospital were strategically selected, and their structural and non-structural risk assessment were analyzed in terms of financial loss, defined as repair costs and repair times as well as injuries expected to occur during a probable future earthquake event.

The prepared guideline is a basis of fundamental research and based on an adaptation of different available methodologies to the local conditions of Kocaeli, and it has been tested that the procedure described here is simple to follow as it provides step-by-step suggestions of how to carry out seismic performance assessment.

What’s next

Throughout this research project, healthcare and government officials could have a global view of the seismic risk of Kocaeli’s city and the related performance of hospital buildings. The implementation of the proposed methodologies to other typical healthcare buildings, including their contents in Kocaeli, Türkiye, and other parts of the world, is ongoing in collaboration with government officials and would involve international institutions such as the World Health Organisation, for example, for better-detailed performance assessment and to better prepare for a potential future earthquake hazard.

Author(s): Wilfrid Gbenankpon Djima, Prof Abdullah Can Zulfikar, Ali Ikbal TUTAR, CDRI Fellows 2023-24

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI).