Regional Building Damage Survey Data on the 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye, Earthquakes

Abstract

On February 6, 2023, two major earthquakes with magnitudes 7.7 and 7.6 Mw struck within 9 h near the towns of Pazarcık and Elbistan, respectively, in the province of Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye. The main regions affected by these earthquakes were 11 provinces of Türkiye, home to approximately 16% of the country’s total population. Carrying out rapid and accurate structural damage evaluations has been a critical prerequisite for the ensuing rescue and recovery efforts. Immediately after the event, the Turkish government commissioned and mobilized a large number of experts for damage assessment of the entire building stock in the affected regions, prioritizing critical buildings such as hospitals and first responder facilities. A total of 2,153,835 buildings were inspected in 3 months after the events, with the majority of this work having been completed within the first month. Metadata created from these evaluations are classified into seven main groups: structural system type, damage state, intended use, year built, number of stories, floor area, and location. This paper presents a summary of the reconnaissance data along with a web portal for accessing portions of the collected data. It also offers preliminary analyses of the metadata to aid future seismic risk assessment studies on the building stock in Türkiye.