In order to estimate the building damage during earthquakes in the future, we should perform damage prediction analysis considering both strong motion characteristics and response characteristics of buildings since we are now becoming possible to predict strong motions with sufficient accuracy. It is indicated that the damage of a building due to an earthquake is greatly influenced by the regional characteristics of buildings in addition to construction types, floor numbers, and construction ages. In this paper vibration characteristics of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in different regions with different design levels are collected by microtremor measurements. Then we construct the damage prediction models that reflect regional differences of the acquired vibration characteristics based on the nonlinear building models proposed by Nagato and Kawase (2001). Then we use observed strong motions and synthesized Nankai earthquake waveforms as inputs to perform nonlinear response analyses. We construct vulnerability functions for four different numbers of floors, two different ages, and five different regions. We found that when we use regionally corrected models in Kochi region for the hypothesized Nankai earthquake the damage ratios will be 18% reduced on the average.
