Comparison of Building Damage Assessment Methods for Risk Analysis in Mining Subsidence Regions

The occurrence of subsidence phenomena in urban regions may induce small to severe damage to buildings. Many methods are provided in the literature to assess buildings damage. Most of these methods are empirical and use the horizontal ground strain as a subsidence intensity in the vicinity of a building. Application and comparison of these methods with a case study is the main objective of this paper. This comparison requires some harmonization of the existing methods and the development of a software, which combines the subsidence hazard prediction, the damage evaluation methods and a database of buildings with structural parameters as well as the geographical coordinates of the buildings An additional results is the development of a method for the prediction of the horizontal ground strain in the vicinity of each building. Results are given as a map of damaged buildings for the case study and the different existing methods with some statistical calculations such as the mean and the standard deviation of damage in the city. Comparison of these results allows identification of the “safer” method that give the higher mean of damage. The comparison of the calculated results and observed damage in Lorrain region show that, the Dzegeniuk et al. methods is more realistic in comparison of the other empirical methods.