Location: Faizabad, Afghanistan

Start and Completion Date: 2019

Area: 1,500,000 m²

Clients: Aga Khan Agency for Habitat

Project Description:

AKAH signed a contract with Protek Engineering Consulting Company for delivering building vulnerability and risk assessment of Faizabad City based on an appropriate sampling of the number of building stock in the city in different sub-districts of the city. The main objective of this study was to conduct building vulnerability and risk assessments at Faizabad city using state-of-the-art methodologies and tools for a risk-sensitive land use plan and contingency planning.

The Specific Objective of the Project was Building Vulnerability Assessments of Faizabad Province to obtain the expected physical damages/human and economic losses of the study areas due to the selected and verified SHM studies provided by AKAH Afghanistan. The project was also expected to enhance the institutional capacities of both INGOs and the Government of Afghanistan and provincial government authorities.

Main Objectives:

The main objectives of this project can be summarized below:

1. Verification and reviewing of existing SHM and other hazard studies
2. Vulnerability analysis of the buildings for all possible seismic hazard levels
3. Risk assessment and providing risk maps for the study area of the scope in Faizabad city
4. Human and economic loss assessment for Faizabad city considering all possible seismic hazard levels
5. Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in urban resiliency for Faizabad city along with recommendations for the development of a resilient city

Conducted Activities:

To achieve the aforementioned goals, the following list of activities were planned and conducted.

• Reviewing, Verification, and Endorsement of Micro-zonation Studies
  • Review of micro-zonation studies
  • Verification of SHM studies using the OpenQuake platform
• Reviewing of Inventory Data and production of a 3D model of the Faizabad city

• • Granting the needed Satellite images
  • Developing the Digital Elevation Models (DEM), and the Digital Surface Models (DSM)
• Data Collection and Composition

• • Providing training for engineers from AKAH to collect the data on the ground
  • Data collection by local engineers
  • Mission to Faizabad for data verification and stakeholders’ engagement
  • Reviewing the code or common building practice
  • Verification of collected data and implementation of the data into the database
  • Determining the Homogeneous Zones
• Seismic Vulnerability and Risk Assessment

• • Analysis of existing buildings’ data.
  • Identifying common building taxonomy and typology.
  • Developing the GIS-based built environment database including semi-automated and manual building extraction and visual building stock identification.
  • Building vulnerability analysis including collection or adaption of fragility/vulnerability functions and preparing the OpenQuake platform for the physical building vulnerability and building loss analysis.
  • Conducting building risk assessment and providing risk/loss maps for the expected building losses.
  • Conducting human and economic loss assessments
• Urban Resiliency of Faizabad City

• • Contingency planning
  • Risk-sensitive land use planning

Deliverables and Summary of the Outputs:

• Inception Report
• SHM Validation Report

This report was considered the second deliverable of the project and refers to the outputs conducted about Reviewing and verification of the existing SHM study using the OpenQuake platform. In this report, as per the request of the client, the existing SHM study was assessed in terms of reliability to be used in the risk assessment project. Moreover, the hazard assessment module of the OpenQuake platform has been established to be used in further steps of the project. The key outputs of this step were:

1. 1. The overall score of the existing SHM study presented by the client was 5.8 out of 10.
   2. PSHA results obtained by the studies of the Protek-Yapi were slightly higher than the original study.
   3. Spectral acceleration maps for different periods that were not available in the original study were provided.
   4. The hazard assessment module of the OpenQuake platform has been prepared for the next steps of the project.

• Data Collection Report

Data collection is one of the main steps of risk assessment studies. In this regard, a local team of surveyors from AKAH was trained and commissioned to survey different attributes of buildings in Faizabad city including structural, non-structural, and socio-economic attributes. A reliable surveying tool was utilized in this study and collected data were investigated by a team of experts from Protek-Yapi including risk assessment, structure, and GIS experts. The outputs of these activities were presented in the data collection report.

• Building Data and Taxonomy Report

The main objective of this report was to present a summary of investigations conducted on collected data to identify different building typologies. Also, a summary of activities conducted to develop a GIS-based built environment database and their results were presented in this report. The key outputs of this stage of studies are:

• • Building typologies within the project area have been investigated thoroughly and the most common typologies have been classified as adobe, masonry, and RC frames.
  • Detailed characteristics of each building typology have been investigated and reported.
  • Using defined homogenous zones and the principle of stratified sampling method building stock in each zone has been classified concerning different pre-defined attributes.
  • A GIS-Based built environmental geodatabase has been developed to gather different collected and developed data into a geodatabase to be shared by the client.
• Building Risk Analysis and Damage Report

The main objective of this report was to present outputs of seismic risk assessment of buildings within the project area focusing on the physical vulnerability of buildings. In this regard following output can be noted:

• • Fragility/Vulnerability functions from seven reliable models that are consistent with the three pre-defined building taxonomies in the study area have been collected and harmonized.
  • Site-specific vulnerability functions have been developed based on collected functions.
  • Risk assessment of the study area has been conducted using four vulnerability models: DRMI-AKDN model for central and south Asia, GEM-EMME model for Pakistan, UN-Habitat Model for Kabul, Protek-Yapi model, considering three different return periods of 72, 475, and 2475 years.
  • Risk maps of the study area based on the above-mentioned models and return periods have been provided.
• Human and Economic Loss Assessment and Urban Resiliency Report

Since buildings are parts of the urban form, any damage to them may harm urban resilience. Thus, when it comes to the vulnerability of buildings, analysis of human and economic loss, and urban resilience needs to be considered. Therefore, in this section, based on the results of the assessment of human and economic loss, efforts have been made to provide recommendations to improve urban resilience.

For calculating human and economic loss, the four models mentioned above were used based on a semi-empirical PAGER model by which the rate of human loss and economic loss was obtained in terms of various scenarios and timeframe (night-day-transit). The results showed that the old part of Faizabad is the most prone area to human and economic loss.

Accordingly, suggestions were made to enhance the resilience of Faizabad after studying the city’s physical, social, and economic characteristics, such as day and night population distribution, population density, land price status, urban amenities, etc. To propose resilience improvement recommendations, first, a conceptual framework of resilience was developed according to Faizabad city condition.

• Consolidated Report

A final consolidated report containing all the above-mentioned materials has been provided in two volumes.

• Way Forward and Recommendations Report

A report of recommendations and the way forward has been provided focusing on three major objectives:

• • Recommendations concerning the reduction in physical vulnerability of the study area and providing guidelines including:
  • Cite microzonation based on local site conditions and soil type.
  • Probabilistic seismic hazard microzonation based on detailed local site conditions.
  • Scenario-based seismic hazard analysis.
  • Providing an appropriate number of scenario earthquakes with the objective of scenario-based vulnerability and risk assessment.
  • Scenario-based vulnerability and risk assessment.
  • Prioritizing different building typologies considering local common construction materials and methods, occupancy type, socio-economic considerations, etc., and proposing the most appropriate building typologies.
  • Proposing performance levels for different building typologies.
  • Providing site-specific analytical fragility and vulnerability models for proposed building typologies.
  • Providing site-specific design and construction guidelines.
  • Providing training and workshop sessions for local engineers, contractors, and stakeholders.

• • Recommendations concerning preparing a resiliency master plan for Feizabad-2040 (RMP for Faizabad 2040) including:
  • Preparing master plan for Faizabad City to guide the future development until 2040
  • Conducting detailed studies of various aspects of the city effectively on the master plan
  • Improving the resiliency of Faizabad City to environmental sustainability, social welfare, and economic growth.
  • Stimulating the institutional and human resources capacity of Faizabad city administration by conducting capacity-building programs.

• • Recommendations concerning investigation and zonation of landslide potential and providing guidelines.
  • Zonation of landslide potential in Afghanistan- a country with the 1:1,000,000 scale and determination of anomalies.
  • Overlaying the anomalies with cities, villages, and any population centers to prioritize the anomalies based on landslide risk.
  • Vulnerability assessment of the anomaly areas.
  • Identification of the high-risk areas based on vulnerability assessment of the anomalies.
  • Preparation of a guideline for landslide hazard investigation in Afghanistan for both occurred events and potential areas including required data, experimental tests, stability analysis, stabilization methods, and economical evaluation of mitigation actions.
  • Investigation of three high-risk cases as the guideline procedure.
  • Comparison of the economic evaluation of mitigation actions and relocating the settlements.