The seismic assessment of existing building stock, particularly in megacities such as Istanbul, is constrained by insufficient data and the time-intensive nature of data collection. This bottleneck persists despite the prevalence of aging structures that no longer comply with current seismic design codes. This paper proposes a mobile application–based framework for collecting building data to improve seismic performance and strengthen public awareness. The framework comprises six sequential steps—seismic hazard and casualties, building risk prioritization, damage evaluation, rapid/preliminary assessment, detailed assessment, and project planning—and provides progressively more accurate information as more data are collected. A mobile application was developed to test the framework and has been downloaded more than 8,000 times. Across Steps 1–5, a total of 3381, 393, 2, 5 and 2 reports were generated. Application of the methodology to sample buildings showed that 87% of the structures fell within the expected performance range, while the remainder exhibited better-than-predicted performance.
Kurtulus Atasever (Mon,) studied this question.