2003 Volume 5 Pages 169-176
Recent damaging earthquakes have clearly revealed that retrofitting low earthquake-resistant structures is the key issue for earthquake disaster reduction. In this paper, a new system and policies for the promotion of retrofitting of weaker structures are proposed The main concept of the Retrofitting Promotion System (RPS) is that the government guarantees a portion of the building repair and reconstruction expenses if retrofitting is implemented by the owner following guidelines before the earthquake and in spite of this, the structure is damaged. The effect of applying the RPS to Istanbul in Turkey was investigated on the basis of the recovery activity data after the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake, Istanbul building stock data, and a hypothetical earthquake ground motion.
