Seismic analysis and probabilistic risk assessment of reinforced concrete buildings: a review and integrated framework

Reinforced concrete buildings constitute a major share of the building stock in seismic regions, yet their earthquake performance remains strongly governed by the joint selection of analysis method, structural modelling strategy, hazard characterisation, and fragility formulation. This review synthesises evidence from 130 systematically selected studies on seismic analysis and probabilistic risk assessment of RC buildings, covering 2001–2026. Nonlinear time-history analysis and incremental dynamic analysis account for 76.9% of the reviewed dataset, reflecting a shift from deterministic code-based evaluation toward mechanism-sensitive and probabilistic assessment. The review demonstrates that structural modelling decisions, including dimensionality, plasticity formulation, explicit representation of local brittle mechanisms, and soil–foundation interaction, alter fragility and risk conclusions as materially as analysis method choice. Hazard-model selection changes annualised loss estimates by factors of two to ten for the same building, establishing hazard representation as a primary driver of risk outcomes rather than a background input. Fragility development is sensitive to structural simulation, intensity-measure selection, damage-state definition, and statistical fitting procedure, with collapse-level risk estimates differing by approximately two times under identical nonlinear analyses when post-processing choices vary. Treatment of aleatory and epistemic uncertainty, experimental and shake-table evidence, and consequence-based assessment reveals persistent gaps in regional calibration, developing-region applicability, scalability, and full performance-based earthquake engineering chain implementation. In response, an integrated framework is proposed that maps building typology, assessment objective, available data, and computational resources to appropriate method selections at each assessment stage, providing a clear, structured, and evidence-based basis for probabilistic seismic risk assessment of existing RC buildings.