An ArcGIS toolbox for the probabilistic performance-based assessment of surface building damage in large-scale urban excavations

Abstract

This paper presents an extension of the REMEDY_GIS_RiskTool (https://github.com/norwegian-geotechnical-institute/REMEDY_GIS_RiskTool), which is a Geographic Information System (GIS) geoprocessing toolbox. The toolbox was implemented in the software ArcGIS and was originally developed at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI). This paper extended the toolbox by allowing Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) modeling in the estimation of building response to excavation-induced short-term ground displacements. Another extension to the toolbox is a probabilistic performance-based assessment (PPBA) approach for quantifying building damage risks in large excavation projects. The PPBA approach enables quantifying the uncertainty caused by aleatoric ground deformation uncertainty and the epistemic uncertainty in SSI modeling. A case study of applying the presented toolbox to a foundation excavation project in Norway is presented to demonstrate how the toolbox can be used to facilitate engineering decision-making. Besides using ArcGIS, the backend Python program of the toolbox can also be adapted to other GIS software and environments.