Rapid Visual Screening of Buildings in the City of Manila, Philippines

Rapid Visual Screening is a cheap and fast procedure in assessing the safety of buildings and classifying them according to the risk that they pose in times of earthquakes. In this project, RVS was employed in the evaluation of mid-rise and high-rise buildings in the City of Manila. The modified ATC 21 form was used to classify the evaluated buildings to low, medium and high risk buildings. The groupings done could be used as reference of DPWH and Manila City Engineering office for prioritizing future detailed seismic evaluation of buildings in the area and do possible retrofitting or other measures on those seismically hazardous ones. The data gathered were based on major factors that affect risk of seismic hazards in any building as indicated in the ATC form which are soil condition, seismicity, type of structure, irregularities, etc. These structural elements were used in the scoring coefficients to assess the seismic performance of the buildings that were studied. Earthquake hazard maps were done reflecting the groupings of the buildings as to the risks they pose in case a major earthquake occurs. Agencies and local governments involved on earthquake mitigation may adopt this procedure to begin their disaster mitigation programs.