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The October 30, 2020 Earthquake caused unexpectedly significant damage in Izmir considering its distance to the city. This paper evaluates the recorded ground motions, summarizes the performance of structures affected from the earthquake with emphasis on the reasons of damage. A detailed damage assessment was carried out by the Earthquake Engineering Research Center of Middle East Technical University to compile data on the damage of RC and masonry buildings. It was observed that majority of the damage was concentrated in the Bayrakli district due to its peculiar soil properties where many 7-10 story mid-rise RC buildings suffered heavy damage and collapse. The level of amplified ground motions combined with deficiencies of apparently non-code compliant buildings exacerbated the damage. The main reasons of damage were mainly attributed to the presence of soft stories, lack of proper detailing, poor construction quality, presence of heavy overhangs, and hence significant lack of code-compliance in essence. The influence of infill walls on seismic performance of deficient and inadequate buildings was clearly seen in this earthquake. This paper also discusses seismic code requirements in effect and their influence on the observed building performance. The recorded ground motions were compared with the code spectra to evaluate the performance of the buildings. The code response spectra were found to be well above the recorded ground motion spectra at the sites where significant damage was observed.
RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: There are significant differences in the active cases and fatality rates of Covid-19 for different European countries. METHODOLOGY: The present study employs Monte Carlo based transmission growth simulations for Italy, Germany and Turkey. The probabilities of transmission at home, work and social networks and the number of initial cases have been calibrated to match the basic reproduction number and the reported fatality curves. Parametric studies were conducted to observe the effect of social distancing, work closure, testing and quarantine of the family and colleagues of positively tested individuals. RESULTS: It is observed that estimates of the number of initial cases in Italy compared to Turkey and Germany are higher. Turkey will probably experience about 30% less number of fatalities than Germany due its smaller elderly population. If social distancing and work contacts are limited to 25% of daily routines, Germany and Turkey may limit the number of fatalities to a few thousands as the reproduction number decreases to about 1.3 from 2.8. Random testing may reduce the number of fatalities by 10% upon testing least 5/1000 of the population. Quarantining of family and workmates of positively tested individuals may reduce the total number of fatalities by about 50%. CONCLUSIONS: The fatality rate of Covid-19 is estimated to be about 1.5% based on the simulation results. This may further be reduced by limiting the number of non-family contacts to two, conducting tests more than 0.5% of the population and immediate quarantine of the contacts for positively tested individuals.
