Japanese and Turkish Joint Detailed Survey of RC Buildings Damaged by the 2023 Turkey Earthquake

Abstract

The Architectural Institute of Japan formed an investigation team to survey the damage to buildings damaged by the February 2023 Turkey earthquakes. The investigation team was dispatched to the affected area from March 28 to April 4, 2023 and conducted field surveys jointly with a Turkish expert group. As part of this investigation, the authors conducted detailed surveys of damaged reinforced concrete buildings. The survey area covers five provinces where extensive building damage was confirmed: Gaziantep, Hatay, Kahramanmaras, Adiyaman, and Malatya. The buildings surveyed were those that are useful for comparative analysis, and ones that allowed for relative ease of an on-site inspection. As a result, a total of 25 buildings were investigated, many of which were constructed after 2000, and the damage level ranged from slightly to severely damaged. In each building, the arrangement, dimensions, and damage grades of columns and walls on the floors that suffered the most damage were recorded, and their damage level was evaluated based on the Japanese and the Turkish post-earthquake damage assessment guidelines. In this paper, an overview of the results of this survey is reported. Based on the survey results, we report the results of an analysis of the structural features and seismic performance of the surveyed Turkish buildings compared to typical Japanese buildings. In addition, the causes of commonly observed damage characteristics in the surveyed buildings and the damage level determined by the Japanese and Turkish guidelines are discussed. © 2024, International Association for Earthquake Engineering. All rights reserved.