TITLE:
Assessment of Seismic Indirect Losses Based on Utility Curves
AUTHORS:
Jaime García-Pérez, Eric García-López
KEYWORDS:
Indirect Losses, Human Life Value, Willingness Criteria, Utility, Seismic Design
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Civil Engineering,
Vol.9 No.3,
September
10,
2019
ABSTRACT: In the process of quantifying
optimum seismic design parameters, the losses implying the failure of the
system must be assessed. Intangibles such as human lives may lie among indirect
losses. In this paper, we propose a model to calculate the value of the investment that society should be willing to make for saving lives. In order to do this,
we analyze both individual and social problems. However, special treatment is
given to the individual problem where the value of the life of a human being is
inferred by what the person should be willing to pay or willing to accept to
reduce the risk of dying. Due to the use of utility curves in the calculation
of this kind of intangible, we pay special attention to shape and requirement
conditions of these curves. We also pay attention when personal impact and
legacies or bequests are considered in utility curves. The results are shown
through some applications, especially in the computation of optimum seismic
design coefficients at a low seismicity site.