Development of Spatial Analytical Model for Building Vulnerability Assessment of Nibong Tebal Area

Malaysia is anticipated to be an earthquake free zone, but is situated close to the earthquake tremors due to the seismic events that surround it. The earthquake endangerment is associated with a particular activity that follows it and produce causalities where the building failure is one of them. Therefore, building vulnerability is dealt with as significant human made factor playing a role in the amount of damages and losses the earthquake shock leaves. NibongTebal town is chosen as representative region of Penang, where tremors of surrounding area earthquake were reported several times. The research aims to determine the main and dominant vulnerability factors, build geo-spatial data linking to vulnerability attributes of NibongTebal buildings, assess vulnerability against earthquakes, produce an earthquake hazard micro-zonation map for the town, and develop a comprehensive GIS-based decision making procedure for building vulnerability assessment applicable to other major Malaysian town/cities. Preceding literatures and the consultations with experts were employed to determine 12 main vulnerability factors .GIS-MCDM with AHP based procedure was applied in ranking earthquake hazard zones .Arc GIS software was used in the whole MCDM procedure while the AHP and GM calculations were carried out using Microsoft Spreadsheet programming. Quick bird satellite image was geo-referenced, required vulnerability data was collected by field surveying (individual building base), and the weighted linear combination (WLC) model classified the buildings into 3 and 5 hazard zones. Consequently, the hazard zones of NibongTebal based on the buffer area around collapse or damage building was produced and displayed to reflect the reality of area around hazard affected zone.