The earthquake risk at any location depends on the seismic hazard as well as the vulnerability of its structures. Depending on the seismic evaluation, a building can be demolished, retrofitted to increase its capacity, or modified to decrease its seismic demand. The seismic vulnerability evaluation of the existing buildings is required for the following: buildings may not have been designed to resist seismic forces or designed before the publication of the current seismic codes, the condition of buildings is apparently of poor quality or deteriorated with time and change of use of the building and the soil has a high liquefaction potential. Seismic vulnerability evaluation is defined as an approved process or methodology of evaluating deficiencies in a building that prevents the building from achieving a selected performance objective. Moreover, pushover analysis was conducted to investigate the vulnerability of these buildings. Seismic evaluation was applied on the selected two case studies, one represents the GLD buildings and the other represents the buildings designed according to Egyptian code. In this paper, the light is shed on the significant contributions in the field of seismic vulnerability evaluation of buildings in order to suggest a suitable procedure for seismic evaluation of existing R.C. The need is raised to study the vulnerability of these buildings to avoid a serious risk.
Many existing buildings in Egypt were designed to resist the gravity loads only (GLD) without seismic provisions. Recent earthquakes illustrate that the older buildings, which are not designed to resist earthquakes, have been damaged rather than the buildings which have been designed according to seismic codes. Therefore, the main way of decreasing losses is to construct seismic resisting structures.
Although some progress in the area of seismic prediction has been made, earthquakes cannot be accurately predicted in time, magnitude or location. Severe earthquakes, when near inhabited districts, have caused extensive loss of life and property. Earthquakes are natural phenomena that occur at several places of the world.
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