Regional Building Damage Survey Data on the 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye, Earthquakes
Zafer Yılmaz, Ahmet Can Altunışık, Ertuǧrul Taciroğlu, Murat Günaydın, Fatih Yesevi Okur, Fezayil Sunca, Rafet Şişman, Banu Aslan, Tuğrul Sezdirmez
Abstract
On February 6, 2023, two major earthquakes with magnitudes 7.7 and 7.6 Mw struck within 9 h near the towns of Pazarcık and Elbistan, respectively, in the province of Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye. The main regions affected by these earthquakes were 11 provinces of Türkiye, home to approximately 16% of the country’s total population. Carrying out rapid and accurate structural damage evaluations has been a critical prerequisite for the ensuing rescue and recovery efforts. Immediately after the event, the Turkish government commissioned and mobilized a large number of experts for damage assessment of the entire building stock in the affected regions, prioritizing critical buildings such as hospitals and first responder facilities. A total of 2,153,835 buildings were inspected in 3 months after the events, with the majority of this work having been completed within the first month. Metadata created from these evaluations are classified into seven main groups: structural system type, damage state, intended use, year built, number of stories, floor area, and location. This paper presents a summary of the reconnaissance data along with a web portal for accessing portions of the collected data. It also offers preliminary analyses of the metadata to aid future seismic risk assessment studies on the building stock in Türkiye.