A relational database to support post-earthquake building damage and recovery assessment

Systematically collected and curated data sets from historical events provide a strong basis for simulating the physical and functional effects of natural hazards on the built environment. This article develops a relational database to support post-earthquake damage and recovery modeling of building portfolios. The current version of the database has been populated with information on the 3695 buildings affected by the 2014 South Napa, California, earthquake. The associated data categories include general building characteristics, site properties and shaking intensities, building damage and repair permitting (timing and type) information, and census-block-level sociodemographics. The Napa data set can be used to validate post-earthquake recovery simulation methodologies and explore the effectiveness of different modeling techniques in predicting damage. The database can be expanded to include other earthquakes and the overall framework can be adapted to other types of natural hazards (e.g. hurricanes, flooding).