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Implementation of seismic assessment of schools in El Salvador
Journal Pre-proof Implementation of seismic assessment of schools in El Salvador Edgar Armando Peña Figueroa, Petra Malisan, Stefano Grimaz PII:
S2212-4209(19)30891-X
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101449
Reference:
IJDRR 101449
To appear in:
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
Received Date: 22 July 2019 Revised Date:
6 December 2019
Accepted Date: 11 December 2019
Please cite this article as: Edgar.Armando.Peñ. Figueroa, P. Malisan, S. Grimaz, Implementation of seismic assessment of schools in El Salvador, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101449. This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Implementation of seismic assessment of schools in El Salvador PhD. Edgar Armando Peña Figueroa, PhD. Petra Malisan, Prof. Stefano Grimaz Abstract The management of school infrastructures is a complicated task. Administrators and decisionmakers strive to keep the schools in optimal and functional conditions. The routine maintenance of schools requires the definition of strategies for effectively allocating the available financial resources. This situation becomes more complicated when taking into account the adverse effects that geological events or extreme weather conditions can generate in relatively short periods. To be prepared for various situations, when defining a strategy to direct financial resources, decisionmakers must clearly recognize the different hazards that can affect schools and have an inventory of the learning facilities in the country. The description of each school should include essential information on its vulnerability, defined utilizing occupational safety concepts and engineering criteria. This information, combined with the information on the possible hazards that may affect the school, would provide enough inputs to decision-makers to prioritize the investments in schools that require more attention. This paper describes the application of the seismic VISUS methodology (Visual Inspection for defining Safety Upgrading Strategies) in a pilot project sponsored by UNESCO for assessing the safety situation of 100 schools in El Salvador, in case of earthquake. The paper describes the steps adopted for the project implementation, the final outcomes, and the lessons-learnt which were the base for upgrading the VISUS methodology to a multi-hazard perspective.
1. Introduction The country of El Salvador is almost yearly affected by severe meteorological and geological hazards. The country is frequently shaken by earthquakes originated from various sources, i.e. active local faults, the activity of the volcanic chain of the Pacific fire belt and the subduction generated by the interaction of the Cocos Plate and the Caribbean Plate, parallel to the Salvadoran coasts. There are also seismic sources in Guatemala and Honduras that affect a large part of the territory [1]. The central and the coastal zones of the country are the most affected by seismic activity, that often causes landslides and in some cases generates damage to buildings. El Salvador has just over 6,000 schools, more than 5,000 of which are administered by the public sector. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean report [2], the El Salvador severe earthquake on January 13th, 2001 (Mw=7.7) damaged 1,566 public schools, affecting not only buildings structures but also electrical and sanitary systems, furniture, equipment, and teaching materials. Exactly one month later, on February 13th, 2001, another earthquake (Mw=6.6) caused the collapse of a school resulting in the death of 23 students and their teachers [3]. The safety situation of some buildings affected by past earthquakes has not yet been assessed, thus suggesting the potential presence of unsafe conditions for users. Some situations require an inspection done by experts to carry out structural analyses that allow estimating the capacity of the buildings in case of future events. Moreover, exposure to weathering and the inherent deterioration, combined with the lack of preventive maintenance, is worsening the situation of learning facilities, especially concerning the non-structural elements that could fall and cause injuries. An even distribution of financial resources would not be an effective solution to improve the conditions of school infrastructure, and currently, there is no strategy for decision-makers to optimally select the safety upgrading interventions, neither to evaluate their effectiveness in improving the safety conditions of facilities. Decision-makers can be supported in their task of effectively distributing resources for safety upgrading learning facilities, by a methodology that provides them with a global picture of the school safety conditions at territorial level. In order to implement a methodology for supporting decision-making, in 2013 a pilot project was implemented in El Salvador, in which the visual inspection for defining safety upgrading strategies (VISUS)
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methodology [4] was tested for assessing the safety situation of 100 schools in case of seismic hazard. This paper illustrates the essential features of the seismic VISUS methodology implemented in the El Salvador pilot project. Then, it focuses on the implementation strategies, highlighting the solutions adopted to apply the methodology on 100 schools. The results of the implementation are then presented, showing some statistics on the outcomes. Finally, a discussion on the first application of the methodology and the feedbacks is presented, highlighting the lessons-learned that permitted to upgrade the VISUS methodology to the current multi-hazard version [4].
2. The seismic VISUS methodology For establishing disaster risk reduction strategies for a multitude of learning facilities, decisionmakers should have, preliminarily, an overall view of the circumstances they are dealing with. They need information on the actual safety situation of each facility and on the interventions required to improve their safety conditions. The seismic VISUS methodology was developed for assessing the seismic safety of a large number of schools, and it provides decision-makers with elements of information that support the identification of safety upgrading strategies [4,8]. The VISUS methodology is illustrated in detail in [5-9]; this section aims at summarising its essential aspects and how it was conceived for the first applications in El Salvador. The safety assessment of a large number of schools for intervention prioritization requires performing several safety evaluations and, at the same time, minimizing as much as possible the resources used for making these evaluations. For this purpose, VISUS adopts a technical triage approach that permits to rapidly assess the critical issues of the situation and to suggest the priorities of intervention in accordance with specific rules and criteria. The technical triage process provides a pragmatic and objective safety assessment approach. In order to define the triage rules and criteria, VISUS was based on the pre-codification of expert reasoning, so as to achieve a safety assessment of a quality level comparable to an expert’s one, when applied to the same input data. The expert reasoning process follows three main phases, which were also adopted by VISUS (Figures 1 and 2), that are: • Characterization. This phase consists of the acquisition of substantial elements, i.e. the information essential for the articulation of the judgment. In VISUS the substantial elements are pre-codified, and this facilitates non-expert surveyors in their observation and acquisition during the visual inspection of schools. • Evaluation. This phase is based on the processing of the acquired substantial elements: the expert uses his/her knowledge to deduce the problem given the observed elements. In VISUS, the rules and criteria used by experts have been gathered through elicitation questions and expressed in logical trees. This enables the automated application of these rules and criteria through algorithms that simulate expert reasoning, starting from the substantial elements acquired during the characterization phase. • Judgement. This phase consists of the formulation of the judgement, by using indicators and producing reports to support decision-makers. In VISUS, the indicators have been precodified following decision-makers feedbacks, while the automated algorithms based on the expert’s rules and criteria permit to assign the indicators and create the final reports. Being VISUS based on expert reasoning, it is possible to distinguish two steps: the first is based on the acquisition of the substantial information by non-expert surveyors, and the second is based on the use of automated algorithms able to replicate the expert evaluation and judgments (Figure 1). In order to replicate the expert reasoning with an automated procedure, it is necessary to precodify it; this entails pre-codifying firstly the potential response of a facility in case of a seismic event (i.e. the potential ‘critical behavioural effect’), and, subsequently, the substantial elements that mainly contribute to the definition of each ‘critical behavioural effect’. Figure 2 explains the VISUS process for the definition of safety judgements with more details. In order to make a judgment on a situation, it is first necessary to acquire the substantial elements that characterize and describe it. This is done by VISUS surveyors, which inspect the school and
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acquire the pre-codified substantial elements using survey support tools. The pre-codified substantial elements are the essential information that allows identifying the presence of a situation predisposed to a critical behaviour (in the example of Figure 2, it is represented by a structure with soft-story). Expert knowledge associates the predisposed situation to a ‘critical behavioural effect’, i.e. a potential response that the building could have in case of a seismic event. The rules and criteria used by experts for this association were elicited and used for implementing automated algorithms that replicate experts’ evaluations. For each ‘critical behavioural effect’, experts defined also the threshold values of the seismic event which are likely to activate the expected consequences. These values are collected in the so-called ‘VISUS triggering tables’. The expected consequences are described by a three-classes warning level, with the following concise judgements: ‘no concern’, ‘difficulties’ and ‘severe consequences’. In general, if the seismic event has a very low magnitude, it is very probable that it would not generate any concerns for the safety of people in the building. Conversely, if the event is very large, it would probably activate the potential response, generating the critical behavioural effect and causing difficulties or severe consequences for the safety of the occupants. However, if the situation is not predisposed to a specific critical effect, no matters the magnitude of the event, the critical consequences associated with the analysed critical effect would not occur. It is important to remark that VISUS is based on the visual inspection of a school for triage purposes, therefore the cases requiring a detailed evaluation that could be achieved only with technical and specific assessments are deferred. The VISUS triggering tables are defined by experts using various information, for example, arising from observations of damage after past events, or using evaluations derived from statistical analysis of data sets of construction typologies (such as [10]), or using information from studies on the structural capacity that a building compliant to national standards should have (such as [11,12]). The seismic VISUS methodology provides outcomes both on the safety situation of each school and on its safety upgrading needs. The VISUS methodology identifies the potential criticalities in schools related to five safety issues (Figure 3), that are called: ‘location/site’, ‘structural global’, ‘structural local’, ‘non-structural’, and ‘functionality’. The VISUS outcomes are expressed through a set of graphical indicators (Figure 3): • The structural warning level summarizes the judgement on the seismic structural behaviour adopting three-classes. • The warning rose shows the warning level for each VISUS safety issue. • The safety stars summarize the final overall judgement on safety that expresses the expected performance during the seismic event considered for the evaluations. • The safety upgrading actions suggest what to do for upgrading the safety of learning facilities, according to six classes: ‘site verification’ (SV), ‘retrofitting or rehabilitation’ (RF), ‘strengthening or reinforcement’ (ST), ‘repair’ (RP), ‘stabilization’ (SB), and ‘reorganization’ (RO). • The convenience expresses the advantage of retrofitting versus reconstructing. The procedure for the implementation of VISUS requires, as a first step, the adaptation of the methodology to the peculiarities of the country. Then, it is necessary to train the VISUS surveyors, i.e. local experts and/or engineering students that will acquire substantial information. A “control office” is required for checking all the survey information and share it with the experts from SPRINT-Lab (Safety and Protection Intersectoral Laboratory of the University of Udine, Italy) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), in order to apply the automated elaboration and create the VISUS individual and collective reports. An overview of how this process was applied in El Salvador is described in the following section.
3. Implementation strategy in El Salvador pilot project VISUS was initially developed and applied by SPRINT-Lab researchers for the assessment of the seismic safety of schools in Italy in 2009 [13]. In order to implement it in the pilot project conducted in El Salvador, the methodology was renewed for extending its application by means of trained non-expert surveyors: a new graphical language was introduced both for the outcomes and for the
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description of the substantial elements in the survey forms. The procedures for the school inspection were reviewed too, in order to adapt the methodology to local characteristics and local language. These reviews led to the development of a survey support tool, which was developed both through a paper-based data acquisition form, and an app to use with mobile devices (smartphones, tablets). In the paper-based form and in the app the substantial elements are divided in sections, in order to follow the different phases of school inspections (e.g. inspection of the schoolyard or of a building). The survey tool supported the surveyors in recognizing, collecting and photographing the pre-codified substantial elements during a school inspection. The implementation of VISUS in El Salvador pilot project revealed from the beginning the importance of having a structured organization, with the constitution of a steering and a local committee, and the appointment of the key figure of ‘focal point’, who is preferably a local technician with a strong scientific background. The steering committee comprised staff from UNESCO headquarters and SPRINT-Lab researchers, as well as the focal point. The role of the steering committee involved adapting VISUS to the local characteristics of the country, preparing the training on VISUS, elaborating the survey data and preparing the final reports. The local committee was composed by staff from Ministry of Education (MINED, for its name in Spanish) and professors of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of University of El Salvador (FIA-UES, for its name in Spanish). Its main role was to prepare the basis for the VISUS implementation. The focal point was in charge of coordinating the local committee and liaising with steering and local committees. The role was assigned to a local expert with a technical background and professor at the FIA-UES. The focal point managed and coordinated the implementation processes of VISUS and shared with the steering committee the information for the adaptation of the methodology. 3.1. Adaptation The first activity of the local committee was to look for all the institutions which can contribute to the implementation of the methodology by collecting and sharing all the required information. A list and a short description of school typologies were defined, including prevalent structural materials and typologies, as vertical structures, roof or floor typologies. Representative photographic documentation for each typology was also provided. A database with basic information of all the schools in El Salvador was provided by MINED. The local committee collected also technical information related to natural hazards (PGA values for seismic hazard, and other information related to hazards in the country), and maps describing its classification in the territory. Additional local information as landslides areas, definition of type of soils or historical damage of schools was also included. The information related to natural hazards was obtained at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. In order to esteem the structural capacity of the local infrastructures, the focal point provided a summarized description of building design, including current practices and historical background. The historical background comprised also an evaluation of the structural-strength ratio (historical/current) based on the default design values, i.e. the ratio between the lowest structuralstrength admissible for buildings designed according to past building codes, and the value of structural-strength required by the current building code (in 2013). These ratios were defined for each structural typology, also using the values already existent in the literature (e.g. [11,12]). The focal point and local committee collected also additional technical information, such as scientific papers describing comparisons among building codes in the country or related to the similar construction typologies. For facilities with a structure built without following any building code, the methodology adopted the structural resistance values suggested by Hazus® [10]. The information related to hazards and to structural capacity was combined with structural engineering criteria to define trigger values, which describe the activation of structural or non-structural problems (for example, it was required to estimate PGA values that could provoke the fall of a false ceiling). Costs of interventions were assigned using the information of MINED and consulting local professionals and companies. The focal point created a list with a short description of interventions usually applied to school facilities, including non-structural interventions such as removal and
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substitution of false ceiling, and structural interventions like column jacketing. In addition to direct interventions on the buildings, other interventions as the construction of retaining walls, fences and others were included to incorporate typical countermeasure against natural hazards. Each intervention was budgeted by square meter, using reference costs of materials and labour at the country. Additional information related to local conditions was considered through weighting indexes accounting for cost increase for interventions on heritage buildings, size of schools, and availability of materials at a local level. After the information was fully collected, the local committee selected 100 schools for testing and applying the VISUS methodology. In order to include most of the conditions around the country, schools were selected from urban or rural zones and from coastal or mountain areas, in three different regions in El Salvador: San Salvador, La Libertad and La Paz. 3.2. Training and survey A four-day training was developed in order to instruct VISUS surveyors, involving also local professors and technicians, which become trainers of the methodology and supported surveyors clarifying their doubts and questions. The training activities were coordinated by the focal point with the support of the steering committee. The training was divided into two sessions: the first was addressed to decision-makers of the MINED or the institution in charge of school infrastructure maintenance, in order to introduce the methodology and explain how to interpret and use the results. The second session was addressed to professors and students who participated in the field surveys (overall 6 professors of the School of Civil Engineering of FIA-UES and 25 students attended the training). 15 technicians of MINED, directly involved in maintenance activities, were also included at this training. Local experts and professionals (25 in total) of the Salvadoran Association of Engineers and Architects participated during the training to know about the VISUS methodology. The training was divided in two main parts: one dedicated to the explanation of the methodology and of the criteria for identifying the substantial elements (traditional lessons) and one part in which the learn-by-doing approach was adopted, in which trainers and students surveyed three pilot schools. The training was supported by a handbook [14], that quickly introduced the VISUS methodology and explained the purposes and the modalities of the surveys. Training activities included the pilot evaluation of three schools, where students, professors and technicians applied the knowledge acquired during the lessons. The surveys of the 100 schools of the pilot project were implemented by 15 students selected from the group of 25 trained students. The surveys were conducted in coordination with the authorities of MINED and the directors of each school. The 15 students formed subgroups of 3 members, coordinated by one professor, who participated in the training and clarified structural concepts during the building evaluations. At least one technician of the MINED accompanied the inspections. Considering the size, location and accessibility of the schools, each of the subgroups were assigned to one or more school by journey (am and pm journeys were programmed). Following the methodology, a total of 3 hours at most was required to evaluate a school complex. During surveys, most of the information was collected using electronic devices like tablets or smartphones, but due to particularities founded during surveys, it was necessary to document some additional findings in notes or drawings on paper. The electronic devices allowed to acquire a photographic description of the inspected schools, which was subsequently used to illustrate the findings at each learning facility. 3.3. Check of information, elaboration and reporting After the surveys, the focal point and/or VISUS trainers checked the acquired information in order to verify its correctness and eventually discuss and clarify with surveyors the reasons for assigning or not a certain value. Then, the focal point and the local committee uploaded the survey information on the VISUS cloud to share it with the steering committee. The shared information was then elaborated by the SPRINT-Lab researchers through the application of automated algorithms, that applied the VISUS evaluation rules and criteria. The outcomes were used for
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creating the reports for each school (individual reports) and the collective report with a summary of results for all the assessed schools. The outcomes and reports were implemented in a GIS database and in web maps, which were directly consultable by the local committee and provided information for supporting decision-makers in the definition of safety upgrading strategies.
4. Results The safety assessment of school complex in VISUS is divided into five different issues, as illustrated in Figure 3. Depending on the structural configuration of the buildings, structural units were evaluated individually. The information collected during the surveys is summarized in two types of reports. A collective report is addressed to the national and local authorities, providing decision-makers and the educational community with practical information that will allow them to make evidence-based decisions on investment needs and areas of concern. An individual report for each school summarizes in a systematic way the different elements found and analysed during the assessment. Each individual report ends with a series of recommendations/interventions that will allow the upgrading of the safety level of the school. The report includes photographic proofs and indicators that summarize the potential damage of the school in case of expected earthquake occurs. As before mentioned, in El Salvador a total of 100 school complex (S.C.) was assessed by applying VISUS, for a total amount of 300 buildings and 494 structural units (S.U.), involving about 50,000 students, 2,000 teachers and 300 administrative staff. Figure 4 shows the location of the 100 school complexes, the coloured star used as a marker for each school indicates the number of stars assigned, according to the colour association in the legend. Based on the three warning levels previously described, Figure 5 shows, in the left part, the distribution of warning levels with the five safety issues for the 100 school complexes. In the right part, Figure 5 shows the distribution of safety stars. Similarly, Figure 6 shows the distribution of the VISUS safety judgements considering the structural units. The collective report includes also a statistical summary which describes the main findings divided according to the five VISUS safety issues: • Location / site: - 44% of analysed school complexes are located in a suitable site location. - 40% of school complexes are located in areas where, in the case of an earthquake, related effects such as tsunamis or volcanic eruptions could be triggered. - 16% of school complexes are located in an unsuitable site (e.g. in a potential landslide area or near a seismic fault). • Structural global: - 48% of school complexes could require interventions on structure (such as structural retrofitting or rehabilitation); these interventions are subordinated to more detailed technical structural verification. - 52% of school complexes have adequate global structural behaviour. - 30% of structural units could require interventions on structure (such as structural retrofitting or rehabilitation); these interventions are subordinated to more detailed technical structural verification. - 70% of structural units have adequate global structural behaviour. • Structural local: - 75% of structural units do not reveals major problems. - 19% of structural units could manifest difficult situations for the people (caused, for example, by pounding between two structural units or local damage in short columns). - 6% of structural units could manifest potential severe consequences for people safety. These situations could be related, in some cases, to existent damage progression or to the potential instability of structural elements. • Non-structural:
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5% of structural units do not require any intervention. 62% of structural units require interventions in order to stabilize the non-structural elements (e.g. fixing the furniture to walls or improving the fastening of false ceilings). - 23% of structural units require interventions in order to remove and/or remake the nonstructural elements (e.g. damaged false ceilings). Functionality: - Few schools (1%) do not show potential problems associated with access or egress (evacuation). - 59% of schools require interventions on egress system and/or meeting points in order to improve the current situation, which could imply difficulties for people during an evacuation in case of an earthquake. - 40% of schools require interventions on egress system and/or meeting points in order to improve the current situation, which could imply the trapping of people inside a building or unsafe meeting points. -
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The collective report includes a summary of the results school by school, indicating the safety evaluations through the warning level, the rose of intervention needs and the safety stars. The needs for safety upgrading are illustrated by the required upgrading actions, the estimation of budget to allocate for the school complex, and the indication of the convenience of conducting the actions (Figure 7). Administrators and decision-makers can see the outcomes of the VISUS assessments for the 100 school complex in OpenStreetMap or in Google maps.
5. Discussion and lesson-learned The VISUS El Salvador pilot project permitted both to assess 100 schools in the country and to draft the first guidelines for the implementation of the methodology. Furthermore, during and after the implementation, surveyors, trainers and decision-makers provided useful feedbacks that permitted to improve the methodology, especially concerning the use of the application for the survey: in fact, in several cases, it resulted more efficient to fill a paper-based version and subsequently fill in the IT application. However, in the paper-based version, it resulted complicated to associate the photos to the identified substantial elements. Temporary solutions (based on third parties apps) were identified to overcome these difficulties. Students provided very positive feedbacks on the methodology, especially concerning the training and the graphical representation of the substantial elements for the survey. Students highlighted that that training allowed them to quickly understand the criteria for identifying the substantial elements and for assessing the safety of learning (Figure 8). The pilot project highlighted the following aspects: • The important roles of focal point, local committee, and steering committee. In order to succeed with the implementation of VISUS in El Salvador, it was necessary to constitute the steering and local committees coordinated by a focal point, in this case, an academic with knowledge about the situation of local infrastructures and natural hazards, and who is able to develop risk assessment strategies. El Salvador experience demonstrated that the project can be successfully developed through the coordination and participation of an academic institution, guaranteeing the development of skills in the new generations of professionals. The training of trainers permits to potentially train new surveyors, and therefore it facilitates the potential self-management of a new project. The interaction between all the involved institutions through the local committee was essential to succeed with the pilot project. Due to its success, this strategy has been repeated in other countries where the methodology has been implemented (see [5]). • VISUS is a capacity-building tool. The pilot project had very positive feedback from students involved in the assessment and proved to be a good methodology for transferring knowledge and building capacities in the country, also through the learn-by-doing approach adopted thanks to the involvement of students, technicians, and professors. Furthermore,
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the experience permitted to draw useful suggestions for improving the mobile application, in order to simplify and make more effective the data collection during the surveys. VISUS outcomes support for decision-makers. The feedbacks of decision-makers highlighted that the outcomes of the methodology are clear and effective in order to highlight the situations in which it is opportune intervene with priority. The outcomes facilitate the definition of safety upgrading strategies, also considering the availability of various financial sources (e.g. funds specifically allocated for the maintenance of buildings, or funds for the structural interventions).
All the information collected during the pilot project and the final reports were shared with the Ministry of Education. However, observations of school administrators indicated that although seismic hazard is important, they have additional concerns related to meteorological hazards and maintenance. Starting from these considerations, a process began for upgrading the VISUS methodology and extending it to the assessments of other hazards, such as water- and air-related hazards (flood, tsunami, hurricane, storms, etc.), fire hazard as well as for the assessment of safety considering the day-to-day use of a school. Thanks to the El Salvador pilot project experience, these aspects are now included in the multi-hazard VISUS methodology which provides an overall multi-hazard safety assessment of schools for supporting decision-makers in the definition of safety upgrading strategies. The multi-hazard VISUS methodology was successively applied worldwide in other pilot projects [4] and it is programmed to be applied also in El Salvador on a first set of 50 schools in order to illustrate to decision-makers its potentialities also for multi-hazard safety upgrading purposes.
6. References [1]
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W. Salazar, L. Brown, W. Hernández, J. Guerra, An Earthquake Catalogue for El Salvador and Neighbouring Central American Countries and its Implication in the Seismic Hazard Assessment. Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture, 7 (2013) 1018-1045. Doi: 10.17265/1934-7359/2013.08.011. México, D.F. CEPAL, 2000, “El terremoto del 13 de enero de 2001 en el Salvador: impacto socioeconómico y ambiental: perfiles de proyectos”, 98 pp México, D.F. https://repositorio.cepal.org/handle/11362/25469, last access 29/05/2019. Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, 2001, “Earthquake of 6.6 hits El Salvador on February 13th: Update 15 Feb 2001”, https://reliefweb.int/report/elsalvador/earthquake-66-hits-el-salvador-february-13th-update-15-feb-2001, last access 29/05/2019. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2016. VISUS: A pragmatic expert-based methodology for the seismic safety triage of school facilities, Bollettino Di Geofisica Teorica e Applicata. 57. 91– 110. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2019. Multi-hazard Visual Inspections for the definition of Safety Upgrading Strategies of learning facilities at territorial level: VISUS methodology. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. Torres, J., Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2019a. UNESCO Assessment Guidelines for Reducing Disaster Risk at Learning Facilities. Volume 1. UNESCO. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2019b. UNESCO Assessment Guidelines for Reducing Disaster Risk at Learning Facilities. Volume 2 - VISUS methodology. UNESCO. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2019c. UNESCO Assessment Guidelines for Reducing Disaster Risk at Learning Facilities. Volume 3 - VISUS implementation. UNESCO. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., Torres, J., 2015. VISUS Methodology: A Quick Assessment for Defining Safety Upgrading Strategies of School Facilities, PLANET@RISK. 3. 126–136.
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Federal Emergency Management Agency, HAZUS-MH Risk Assessment and User Group Series Using HAZUS-MH for Risk Assessment, Washington D.C., 2004. https://www.fema.gov/pdf/plan/prevent/hazus/fema433.pdf (accessed March 6, 2019). M. López, J.J. Bommer, R. Pinho, Seismic hazard assessments, seismic design codes, and earthquake engineering in El Salvador, in Spec. Pap. 375 Nat. Hazards El Salvador, 2007. DOI:10.1130/0-8137-2375-2.301. J.J. Bommer, D.A. Hernández, J.A. Navarrete, W.M. Salazar, Seismic hazard assessments for El Salvador, Geofis. Int. (1996). S. Grimaz, D. Slejko, F. Cucchi, F. Barazza, S. Biolchi, E. Del Pin, R. Franceschinis, J. Garcia, N. Gattesco, P. Malisan, A. Moretti, M. Pipan, S. Prizzon, A. Rebez, M. Santulin, L. Zini, F. Zorzini, The ASSESS project: Assessment for seismic risk reduction of school buildings in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region (NE Italy), Boll. di Geofis. Teor. E Appl. 57 (2016) 111–128. DOI:10.4430/bgta0160. S. Grimaz, P. Malisan, VISUS-method handbook, Internal Report for UNESCO’s Project “Providing Decision-making Information and Tools for Enhancing School Safety in El Salvador through School Facilities Assessment and OpenStreetMap Sourcing,” 2013. UNESCO, VISUS Pilot Project in El Salvador. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/naturalsciences/special-themes/disaster-risk-reduction/school-safety/safety-assessment-methodvisus/visus-pilot-project-in-el-salvador/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
Figures
Figure 1 process
VISUS process from reality observation to safety judgment: pre-codification of the expert reasoning
Figure 2
How VISUS pre-codifies expert judgement
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Figure 3
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Seismic VISUS safety issues and outcomes for El Salvador pilot project
Figure 4
Map of the schools of the VISUS El Salvador pilot project (from Google Maps, modified).
Figure 5 Warning levels and safety stars assigned to the 100 school complexes assessed during the VISUS El Salvador pilot project
Figure 6
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Warning levels and safety stars assigned to the 494 structural units of the 100 school complexes
Figure 7
Extract from a collective report (sensible information was removed from the first column).
Figure 8
Feedback from student (extracted from [15]).
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Declaration of interests ☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. ☐The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:
S2212-4209(19)30891-X
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101449
Reference:
IJDRR 101449
To appear in:
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
Received Date: 22 July 2019 Revised Date:
6 December 2019
Accepted Date: 11 December 2019
Please cite this article as: Edgar.Armando.Peñ. Figueroa, P. Malisan, S. Grimaz, Implementation of seismic assessment of schools in El Salvador, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101449. This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Implementation of seismic assessment of schools in El Salvador PhD. Edgar Armando Peña Figueroa, PhD. Petra Malisan, Prof. Stefano Grimaz Abstract The management of school infrastructures is a complicated task. Administrators and decisionmakers strive to keep the schools in optimal and functional conditions. The routine maintenance of schools requires the definition of strategies for effectively allocating the available financial resources. This situation becomes more complicated when taking into account the adverse effects that geological events or extreme weather conditions can generate in relatively short periods. To be prepared for various situations, when defining a strategy to direct financial resources, decisionmakers must clearly recognize the different hazards that can affect schools and have an inventory of the learning facilities in the country. The description of each school should include essential information on its vulnerability, defined utilizing occupational safety concepts and engineering criteria. This information, combined with the information on the possible hazards that may affect the school, would provide enough inputs to decision-makers to prioritize the investments in schools that require more attention. This paper describes the application of the seismic VISUS methodology (Visual Inspection for defining Safety Upgrading Strategies) in a pilot project sponsored by UNESCO for assessing the safety situation of 100 schools in El Salvador, in case of earthquake. The paper describes the steps adopted for the project implementation, the final outcomes, and the lessons-learnt which were the base for upgrading the VISUS methodology to a multi-hazard perspective.
1. Introduction The country of El Salvador is almost yearly affected by severe meteorological and geological hazards. The country is frequently shaken by earthquakes originated from various sources, i.e. active local faults, the activity of the volcanic chain of the Pacific fire belt and the subduction generated by the interaction of the Cocos Plate and the Caribbean Plate, parallel to the Salvadoran coasts. There are also seismic sources in Guatemala and Honduras that affect a large part of the territory [1]. The central and the coastal zones of the country are the most affected by seismic activity, that often causes landslides and in some cases generates damage to buildings. El Salvador has just over 6,000 schools, more than 5,000 of which are administered by the public sector. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean report [2], the El Salvador severe earthquake on January 13th, 2001 (Mw=7.7) damaged 1,566 public schools, affecting not only buildings structures but also electrical and sanitary systems, furniture, equipment, and teaching materials. Exactly one month later, on February 13th, 2001, another earthquake (Mw=6.6) caused the collapse of a school resulting in the death of 23 students and their teachers [3]. The safety situation of some buildings affected by past earthquakes has not yet been assessed, thus suggesting the potential presence of unsafe conditions for users. Some situations require an inspection done by experts to carry out structural analyses that allow estimating the capacity of the buildings in case of future events. Moreover, exposure to weathering and the inherent deterioration, combined with the lack of preventive maintenance, is worsening the situation of learning facilities, especially concerning the non-structural elements that could fall and cause injuries. An even distribution of financial resources would not be an effective solution to improve the conditions of school infrastructure, and currently, there is no strategy for decision-makers to optimally select the safety upgrading interventions, neither to evaluate their effectiveness in improving the safety conditions of facilities. Decision-makers can be supported in their task of effectively distributing resources for safety upgrading learning facilities, by a methodology that provides them with a global picture of the school safety conditions at territorial level. In order to implement a methodology for supporting decision-making, in 2013 a pilot project was implemented in El Salvador, in which the visual inspection for defining safety upgrading strategies (VISUS)
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methodology [4] was tested for assessing the safety situation of 100 schools in case of seismic hazard. This paper illustrates the essential features of the seismic VISUS methodology implemented in the El Salvador pilot project. Then, it focuses on the implementation strategies, highlighting the solutions adopted to apply the methodology on 100 schools. The results of the implementation are then presented, showing some statistics on the outcomes. Finally, a discussion on the first application of the methodology and the feedbacks is presented, highlighting the lessons-learned that permitted to upgrade the VISUS methodology to the current multi-hazard version [4].
2. The seismic VISUS methodology For establishing disaster risk reduction strategies for a multitude of learning facilities, decisionmakers should have, preliminarily, an overall view of the circumstances they are dealing with. They need information on the actual safety situation of each facility and on the interventions required to improve their safety conditions. The seismic VISUS methodology was developed for assessing the seismic safety of a large number of schools, and it provides decision-makers with elements of information that support the identification of safety upgrading strategies [4,8]. The VISUS methodology is illustrated in detail in [5-9]; this section aims at summarising its essential aspects and how it was conceived for the first applications in El Salvador. The safety assessment of a large number of schools for intervention prioritization requires performing several safety evaluations and, at the same time, minimizing as much as possible the resources used for making these evaluations. For this purpose, VISUS adopts a technical triage approach that permits to rapidly assess the critical issues of the situation and to suggest the priorities of intervention in accordance with specific rules and criteria. The technical triage process provides a pragmatic and objective safety assessment approach. In order to define the triage rules and criteria, VISUS was based on the pre-codification of expert reasoning, so as to achieve a safety assessment of a quality level comparable to an expert’s one, when applied to the same input data. The expert reasoning process follows three main phases, which were also adopted by VISUS (Figures 1 and 2), that are: • Characterization. This phase consists of the acquisition of substantial elements, i.e. the information essential for the articulation of the judgment. In VISUS the substantial elements are pre-codified, and this facilitates non-expert surveyors in their observation and acquisition during the visual inspection of schools. • Evaluation. This phase is based on the processing of the acquired substantial elements: the expert uses his/her knowledge to deduce the problem given the observed elements. In VISUS, the rules and criteria used by experts have been gathered through elicitation questions and expressed in logical trees. This enables the automated application of these rules and criteria through algorithms that simulate expert reasoning, starting from the substantial elements acquired during the characterization phase. • Judgement. This phase consists of the formulation of the judgement, by using indicators and producing reports to support decision-makers. In VISUS, the indicators have been precodified following decision-makers feedbacks, while the automated algorithms based on the expert’s rules and criteria permit to assign the indicators and create the final reports. Being VISUS based on expert reasoning, it is possible to distinguish two steps: the first is based on the acquisition of the substantial information by non-expert surveyors, and the second is based on the use of automated algorithms able to replicate the expert evaluation and judgments (Figure 1). In order to replicate the expert reasoning with an automated procedure, it is necessary to precodify it; this entails pre-codifying firstly the potential response of a facility in case of a seismic event (i.e. the potential ‘critical behavioural effect’), and, subsequently, the substantial elements that mainly contribute to the definition of each ‘critical behavioural effect’. Figure 2 explains the VISUS process for the definition of safety judgements with more details. In order to make a judgment on a situation, it is first necessary to acquire the substantial elements that characterize and describe it. This is done by VISUS surveyors, which inspect the school and
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acquire the pre-codified substantial elements using survey support tools. The pre-codified substantial elements are the essential information that allows identifying the presence of a situation predisposed to a critical behaviour (in the example of Figure 2, it is represented by a structure with soft-story). Expert knowledge associates the predisposed situation to a ‘critical behavioural effect’, i.e. a potential response that the building could have in case of a seismic event. The rules and criteria used by experts for this association were elicited and used for implementing automated algorithms that replicate experts’ evaluations. For each ‘critical behavioural effect’, experts defined also the threshold values of the seismic event which are likely to activate the expected consequences. These values are collected in the so-called ‘VISUS triggering tables’. The expected consequences are described by a three-classes warning level, with the following concise judgements: ‘no concern’, ‘difficulties’ and ‘severe consequences’. In general, if the seismic event has a very low magnitude, it is very probable that it would not generate any concerns for the safety of people in the building. Conversely, if the event is very large, it would probably activate the potential response, generating the critical behavioural effect and causing difficulties or severe consequences for the safety of the occupants. However, if the situation is not predisposed to a specific critical effect, no matters the magnitude of the event, the critical consequences associated with the analysed critical effect would not occur. It is important to remark that VISUS is based on the visual inspection of a school for triage purposes, therefore the cases requiring a detailed evaluation that could be achieved only with technical and specific assessments are deferred. The VISUS triggering tables are defined by experts using various information, for example, arising from observations of damage after past events, or using evaluations derived from statistical analysis of data sets of construction typologies (such as [10]), or using information from studies on the structural capacity that a building compliant to national standards should have (such as [11,12]). The seismic VISUS methodology provides outcomes both on the safety situation of each school and on its safety upgrading needs. The VISUS methodology identifies the potential criticalities in schools related to five safety issues (Figure 3), that are called: ‘location/site’, ‘structural global’, ‘structural local’, ‘non-structural’, and ‘functionality’. The VISUS outcomes are expressed through a set of graphical indicators (Figure 3): • The structural warning level summarizes the judgement on the seismic structural behaviour adopting three-classes. • The warning rose shows the warning level for each VISUS safety issue. • The safety stars summarize the final overall judgement on safety that expresses the expected performance during the seismic event considered for the evaluations. • The safety upgrading actions suggest what to do for upgrading the safety of learning facilities, according to six classes: ‘site verification’ (SV), ‘retrofitting or rehabilitation’ (RF), ‘strengthening or reinforcement’ (ST), ‘repair’ (RP), ‘stabilization’ (SB), and ‘reorganization’ (RO). • The convenience expresses the advantage of retrofitting versus reconstructing. The procedure for the implementation of VISUS requires, as a first step, the adaptation of the methodology to the peculiarities of the country. Then, it is necessary to train the VISUS surveyors, i.e. local experts and/or engineering students that will acquire substantial information. A “control office” is required for checking all the survey information and share it with the experts from SPRINT-Lab (Safety and Protection Intersectoral Laboratory of the University of Udine, Italy) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), in order to apply the automated elaboration and create the VISUS individual and collective reports. An overview of how this process was applied in El Salvador is described in the following section.
3. Implementation strategy in El Salvador pilot project VISUS was initially developed and applied by SPRINT-Lab researchers for the assessment of the seismic safety of schools in Italy in 2009 [13]. In order to implement it in the pilot project conducted in El Salvador, the methodology was renewed for extending its application by means of trained non-expert surveyors: a new graphical language was introduced both for the outcomes and for the
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description of the substantial elements in the survey forms. The procedures for the school inspection were reviewed too, in order to adapt the methodology to local characteristics and local language. These reviews led to the development of a survey support tool, which was developed both through a paper-based data acquisition form, and an app to use with mobile devices (smartphones, tablets). In the paper-based form and in the app the substantial elements are divided in sections, in order to follow the different phases of school inspections (e.g. inspection of the schoolyard or of a building). The survey tool supported the surveyors in recognizing, collecting and photographing the pre-codified substantial elements during a school inspection. The implementation of VISUS in El Salvador pilot project revealed from the beginning the importance of having a structured organization, with the constitution of a steering and a local committee, and the appointment of the key figure of ‘focal point’, who is preferably a local technician with a strong scientific background. The steering committee comprised staff from UNESCO headquarters and SPRINT-Lab researchers, as well as the focal point. The role of the steering committee involved adapting VISUS to the local characteristics of the country, preparing the training on VISUS, elaborating the survey data and preparing the final reports. The local committee was composed by staff from Ministry of Education (MINED, for its name in Spanish) and professors of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of University of El Salvador (FIA-UES, for its name in Spanish). Its main role was to prepare the basis for the VISUS implementation. The focal point was in charge of coordinating the local committee and liaising with steering and local committees. The role was assigned to a local expert with a technical background and professor at the FIA-UES. The focal point managed and coordinated the implementation processes of VISUS and shared with the steering committee the information for the adaptation of the methodology. 3.1. Adaptation The first activity of the local committee was to look for all the institutions which can contribute to the implementation of the methodology by collecting and sharing all the required information. A list and a short description of school typologies were defined, including prevalent structural materials and typologies, as vertical structures, roof or floor typologies. Representative photographic documentation for each typology was also provided. A database with basic information of all the schools in El Salvador was provided by MINED. The local committee collected also technical information related to natural hazards (PGA values for seismic hazard, and other information related to hazards in the country), and maps describing its classification in the territory. Additional local information as landslides areas, definition of type of soils or historical damage of schools was also included. The information related to natural hazards was obtained at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. In order to esteem the structural capacity of the local infrastructures, the focal point provided a summarized description of building design, including current practices and historical background. The historical background comprised also an evaluation of the structural-strength ratio (historical/current) based on the default design values, i.e. the ratio between the lowest structuralstrength admissible for buildings designed according to past building codes, and the value of structural-strength required by the current building code (in 2013). These ratios were defined for each structural typology, also using the values already existent in the literature (e.g. [11,12]). The focal point and local committee collected also additional technical information, such as scientific papers describing comparisons among building codes in the country or related to the similar construction typologies. For facilities with a structure built without following any building code, the methodology adopted the structural resistance values suggested by Hazus® [10]. The information related to hazards and to structural capacity was combined with structural engineering criteria to define trigger values, which describe the activation of structural or non-structural problems (for example, it was required to estimate PGA values that could provoke the fall of a false ceiling). Costs of interventions were assigned using the information of MINED and consulting local professionals and companies. The focal point created a list with a short description of interventions usually applied to school facilities, including non-structural interventions such as removal and
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substitution of false ceiling, and structural interventions like column jacketing. In addition to direct interventions on the buildings, other interventions as the construction of retaining walls, fences and others were included to incorporate typical countermeasure against natural hazards. Each intervention was budgeted by square meter, using reference costs of materials and labour at the country. Additional information related to local conditions was considered through weighting indexes accounting for cost increase for interventions on heritage buildings, size of schools, and availability of materials at a local level. After the information was fully collected, the local committee selected 100 schools for testing and applying the VISUS methodology. In order to include most of the conditions around the country, schools were selected from urban or rural zones and from coastal or mountain areas, in three different regions in El Salvador: San Salvador, La Libertad and La Paz. 3.2. Training and survey A four-day training was developed in order to instruct VISUS surveyors, involving also local professors and technicians, which become trainers of the methodology and supported surveyors clarifying their doubts and questions. The training activities were coordinated by the focal point with the support of the steering committee. The training was divided into two sessions: the first was addressed to decision-makers of the MINED or the institution in charge of school infrastructure maintenance, in order to introduce the methodology and explain how to interpret and use the results. The second session was addressed to professors and students who participated in the field surveys (overall 6 professors of the School of Civil Engineering of FIA-UES and 25 students attended the training). 15 technicians of MINED, directly involved in maintenance activities, were also included at this training. Local experts and professionals (25 in total) of the Salvadoran Association of Engineers and Architects participated during the training to know about the VISUS methodology. The training was divided in two main parts: one dedicated to the explanation of the methodology and of the criteria for identifying the substantial elements (traditional lessons) and one part in which the learn-by-doing approach was adopted, in which trainers and students surveyed three pilot schools. The training was supported by a handbook [14], that quickly introduced the VISUS methodology and explained the purposes and the modalities of the surveys. Training activities included the pilot evaluation of three schools, where students, professors and technicians applied the knowledge acquired during the lessons. The surveys of the 100 schools of the pilot project were implemented by 15 students selected from the group of 25 trained students. The surveys were conducted in coordination with the authorities of MINED and the directors of each school. The 15 students formed subgroups of 3 members, coordinated by one professor, who participated in the training and clarified structural concepts during the building evaluations. At least one technician of the MINED accompanied the inspections. Considering the size, location and accessibility of the schools, each of the subgroups were assigned to one or more school by journey (am and pm journeys were programmed). Following the methodology, a total of 3 hours at most was required to evaluate a school complex. During surveys, most of the information was collected using electronic devices like tablets or smartphones, but due to particularities founded during surveys, it was necessary to document some additional findings in notes or drawings on paper. The electronic devices allowed to acquire a photographic description of the inspected schools, which was subsequently used to illustrate the findings at each learning facility. 3.3. Check of information, elaboration and reporting After the surveys, the focal point and/or VISUS trainers checked the acquired information in order to verify its correctness and eventually discuss and clarify with surveyors the reasons for assigning or not a certain value. Then, the focal point and the local committee uploaded the survey information on the VISUS cloud to share it with the steering committee. The shared information was then elaborated by the SPRINT-Lab researchers through the application of automated algorithms, that applied the VISUS evaluation rules and criteria. The outcomes were used for
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creating the reports for each school (individual reports) and the collective report with a summary of results for all the assessed schools. The outcomes and reports were implemented in a GIS database and in web maps, which were directly consultable by the local committee and provided information for supporting decision-makers in the definition of safety upgrading strategies.
4. Results The safety assessment of school complex in VISUS is divided into five different issues, as illustrated in Figure 3. Depending on the structural configuration of the buildings, structural units were evaluated individually. The information collected during the surveys is summarized in two types of reports. A collective report is addressed to the national and local authorities, providing decision-makers and the educational community with practical information that will allow them to make evidence-based decisions on investment needs and areas of concern. An individual report for each school summarizes in a systematic way the different elements found and analysed during the assessment. Each individual report ends with a series of recommendations/interventions that will allow the upgrading of the safety level of the school. The report includes photographic proofs and indicators that summarize the potential damage of the school in case of expected earthquake occurs. As before mentioned, in El Salvador a total of 100 school complex (S.C.) was assessed by applying VISUS, for a total amount of 300 buildings and 494 structural units (S.U.), involving about 50,000 students, 2,000 teachers and 300 administrative staff. Figure 4 shows the location of the 100 school complexes, the coloured star used as a marker for each school indicates the number of stars assigned, according to the colour association in the legend. Based on the three warning levels previously described, Figure 5 shows, in the left part, the distribution of warning levels with the five safety issues for the 100 school complexes. In the right part, Figure 5 shows the distribution of safety stars. Similarly, Figure 6 shows the distribution of the VISUS safety judgements considering the structural units. The collective report includes also a statistical summary which describes the main findings divided according to the five VISUS safety issues: • Location / site: - 44% of analysed school complexes are located in a suitable site location. - 40% of school complexes are located in areas where, in the case of an earthquake, related effects such as tsunamis or volcanic eruptions could be triggered. - 16% of school complexes are located in an unsuitable site (e.g. in a potential landslide area or near a seismic fault). • Structural global: - 48% of school complexes could require interventions on structure (such as structural retrofitting or rehabilitation); these interventions are subordinated to more detailed technical structural verification. - 52% of school complexes have adequate global structural behaviour. - 30% of structural units could require interventions on structure (such as structural retrofitting or rehabilitation); these interventions are subordinated to more detailed technical structural verification. - 70% of structural units have adequate global structural behaviour. • Structural local: - 75% of structural units do not reveals major problems. - 19% of structural units could manifest difficult situations for the people (caused, for example, by pounding between two structural units or local damage in short columns). - 6% of structural units could manifest potential severe consequences for people safety. These situations could be related, in some cases, to existent damage progression or to the potential instability of structural elements. • Non-structural:
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5% of structural units do not require any intervention. 62% of structural units require interventions in order to stabilize the non-structural elements (e.g. fixing the furniture to walls or improving the fastening of false ceilings). - 23% of structural units require interventions in order to remove and/or remake the nonstructural elements (e.g. damaged false ceilings). Functionality: - Few schools (1%) do not show potential problems associated with access or egress (evacuation). - 59% of schools require interventions on egress system and/or meeting points in order to improve the current situation, which could imply difficulties for people during an evacuation in case of an earthquake. - 40% of schools require interventions on egress system and/or meeting points in order to improve the current situation, which could imply the trapping of people inside a building or unsafe meeting points. -
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The collective report includes a summary of the results school by school, indicating the safety evaluations through the warning level, the rose of intervention needs and the safety stars. The needs for safety upgrading are illustrated by the required upgrading actions, the estimation of budget to allocate for the school complex, and the indication of the convenience of conducting the actions (Figure 7). Administrators and decision-makers can see the outcomes of the VISUS assessments for the 100 school complex in OpenStreetMap or in Google maps.
5. Discussion and lesson-learned The VISUS El Salvador pilot project permitted both to assess 100 schools in the country and to draft the first guidelines for the implementation of the methodology. Furthermore, during and after the implementation, surveyors, trainers and decision-makers provided useful feedbacks that permitted to improve the methodology, especially concerning the use of the application for the survey: in fact, in several cases, it resulted more efficient to fill a paper-based version and subsequently fill in the IT application. However, in the paper-based version, it resulted complicated to associate the photos to the identified substantial elements. Temporary solutions (based on third parties apps) were identified to overcome these difficulties. Students provided very positive feedbacks on the methodology, especially concerning the training and the graphical representation of the substantial elements for the survey. Students highlighted that that training allowed them to quickly understand the criteria for identifying the substantial elements and for assessing the safety of learning (Figure 8). The pilot project highlighted the following aspects: • The important roles of focal point, local committee, and steering committee. In order to succeed with the implementation of VISUS in El Salvador, it was necessary to constitute the steering and local committees coordinated by a focal point, in this case, an academic with knowledge about the situation of local infrastructures and natural hazards, and who is able to develop risk assessment strategies. El Salvador experience demonstrated that the project can be successfully developed through the coordination and participation of an academic institution, guaranteeing the development of skills in the new generations of professionals. The training of trainers permits to potentially train new surveyors, and therefore it facilitates the potential self-management of a new project. The interaction between all the involved institutions through the local committee was essential to succeed with the pilot project. Due to its success, this strategy has been repeated in other countries where the methodology has been implemented (see [5]). • VISUS is a capacity-building tool. The pilot project had very positive feedback from students involved in the assessment and proved to be a good methodology for transferring knowledge and building capacities in the country, also through the learn-by-doing approach adopted thanks to the involvement of students, technicians, and professors. Furthermore,
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the experience permitted to draw useful suggestions for improving the mobile application, in order to simplify and make more effective the data collection during the surveys. VISUS outcomes support for decision-makers. The feedbacks of decision-makers highlighted that the outcomes of the methodology are clear and effective in order to highlight the situations in which it is opportune intervene with priority. The outcomes facilitate the definition of safety upgrading strategies, also considering the availability of various financial sources (e.g. funds specifically allocated for the maintenance of buildings, or funds for the structural interventions).
All the information collected during the pilot project and the final reports were shared with the Ministry of Education. However, observations of school administrators indicated that although seismic hazard is important, they have additional concerns related to meteorological hazards and maintenance. Starting from these considerations, a process began for upgrading the VISUS methodology and extending it to the assessments of other hazards, such as water- and air-related hazards (flood, tsunami, hurricane, storms, etc.), fire hazard as well as for the assessment of safety considering the day-to-day use of a school. Thanks to the El Salvador pilot project experience, these aspects are now included in the multi-hazard VISUS methodology which provides an overall multi-hazard safety assessment of schools for supporting decision-makers in the definition of safety upgrading strategies. The multi-hazard VISUS methodology was successively applied worldwide in other pilot projects [4] and it is programmed to be applied also in El Salvador on a first set of 50 schools in order to illustrate to decision-makers its potentialities also for multi-hazard safety upgrading purposes.
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W. Salazar, L. Brown, W. Hernández, J. Guerra, An Earthquake Catalogue for El Salvador and Neighbouring Central American Countries and its Implication in the Seismic Hazard Assessment. Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture, 7 (2013) 1018-1045. Doi: 10.17265/1934-7359/2013.08.011. México, D.F. CEPAL, 2000, “El terremoto del 13 de enero de 2001 en el Salvador: impacto socioeconómico y ambiental: perfiles de proyectos”, 98 pp México, D.F. https://repositorio.cepal.org/handle/11362/25469, last access 29/05/2019. Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, 2001, “Earthquake of 6.6 hits El Salvador on February 13th: Update 15 Feb 2001”, https://reliefweb.int/report/elsalvador/earthquake-66-hits-el-salvador-february-13th-update-15-feb-2001, last access 29/05/2019. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2016. VISUS: A pragmatic expert-based methodology for the seismic safety triage of school facilities, Bollettino Di Geofisica Teorica e Applicata. 57. 91– 110. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2019. Multi-hazard Visual Inspections for the definition of Safety Upgrading Strategies of learning facilities at territorial level: VISUS methodology. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. Torres, J., Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2019a. UNESCO Assessment Guidelines for Reducing Disaster Risk at Learning Facilities. Volume 1. UNESCO. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2019b. UNESCO Assessment Guidelines for Reducing Disaster Risk at Learning Facilities. Volume 2 - VISUS methodology. UNESCO. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., 2019c. UNESCO Assessment Guidelines for Reducing Disaster Risk at Learning Facilities. Volume 3 - VISUS implementation. UNESCO. Grimaz, S., Malisan, P., Torres, J., 2015. VISUS Methodology: A Quick Assessment for Defining Safety Upgrading Strategies of School Facilities, PLANET@RISK. 3. 126–136.
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Federal Emergency Management Agency, HAZUS-MH Risk Assessment and User Group Series Using HAZUS-MH for Risk Assessment, Washington D.C., 2004. https://www.fema.gov/pdf/plan/prevent/hazus/fema433.pdf (accessed March 6, 2019). M. López, J.J. Bommer, R. Pinho, Seismic hazard assessments, seismic design codes, and earthquake engineering in El Salvador, in Spec. Pap. 375 Nat. Hazards El Salvador, 2007. DOI:10.1130/0-8137-2375-2.301. J.J. Bommer, D.A. Hernández, J.A. Navarrete, W.M. Salazar, Seismic hazard assessments for El Salvador, Geofis. Int. (1996). S. Grimaz, D. Slejko, F. Cucchi, F. Barazza, S. Biolchi, E. Del Pin, R. Franceschinis, J. Garcia, N. Gattesco, P. Malisan, A. Moretti, M. Pipan, S. Prizzon, A. Rebez, M. Santulin, L. Zini, F. Zorzini, The ASSESS project: Assessment for seismic risk reduction of school buildings in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region (NE Italy), Boll. di Geofis. Teor. E Appl. 57 (2016) 111–128. DOI:10.4430/bgta0160. S. Grimaz, P. Malisan, VISUS-method handbook, Internal Report for UNESCO’s Project “Providing Decision-making Information and Tools for Enhancing School Safety in El Salvador through School Facilities Assessment and OpenStreetMap Sourcing,” 2013. UNESCO, VISUS Pilot Project in El Salvador. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/naturalsciences/special-themes/disaster-risk-reduction/school-safety/safety-assessment-methodvisus/visus-pilot-project-in-el-salvador/ (accessed 27 November 2019).
Figures
Figure 1 process
VISUS process from reality observation to safety judgment: pre-codification of the expert reasoning
Figure 2
How VISUS pre-codifies expert judgement
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Figure 3
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Seismic VISUS safety issues and outcomes for El Salvador pilot project
Figure 4
Map of the schools of the VISUS El Salvador pilot project (from Google Maps, modified).
Figure 5 Warning levels and safety stars assigned to the 100 school complexes assessed during the VISUS El Salvador pilot project
Figure 6
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Warning levels and safety stars assigned to the 494 structural units of the 100 school complexes
Figure 7
Extract from a collective report (sensible information was removed from the first column).
Figure 8
Feedback from student (extracted from [15]).
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Declaration of interests ☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. ☐The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: