Crowdsourcing Exposure Data for Seismic Vulnerability Assessment in Developing Countries

Census-based exposure information is often outdated or incomplete. For seismic risk assessment, this is particularly relevant in regions with non-seismically designed buildings, whose modeling requires higher detailing. The advent of low-cost technologies enabled crowdsourcing the required in situ data. This study presents a framework, based on Volunteered Geographic Information, and a new collection form to gather building data. From the 468 buildings in Nablus (Palestine) that were inventoried, the majority is irregular reinforced concrete frames built after 2002, with three stories or more. All the information was assembled within an online georeferenced platform, enabling the generation of conditional fragility curves.