Risk and resilience analysis of public civil buildings against shelling with explosive sources in urban contexts

Due to their high availability and low cost level, passive protection measures are a key factor for reducing the vulnerability of persons within and close to assets against potentially impacting mortar, rocket and artillery threats. Particularly, mortar shelling has even most recently been reported. At risk are permanent and nonpermanent assets of civil, (non)governmental or peacekeeping organizations with corresponding effects, e.g., on civil society, civil services or successful nation building, respectively. Of interest are the identification of vulnerable areas and the assessment of the effectiveness of protective structures while taking also other counter measures into account. To this end, a seven-step quantitative risk and resilience analysis and management methodology is described and applied. It consists of the analysis of scenarios, frequencies, hazards, damage effects and risks and yields individual and collective risks for multi-threat scenarios. Local individual or collective risks can be minimized below criteria, thus reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience in an efficient way, e.g., by using geometrical changes, by structural roof, wall and window retrofits, by mitigating barriers and/or organizational measures. The approach is demonstrated along with three detailed example cases.