Risk Identification and Weight Analysis of Meteorological Disasters on Ancient Buildings

Abstract

Meteorological disasters impose significant challenges on protection of ancient buildings. By use of Delphi method and Multi-subject research including architecture, meteorology and archaeology, this work identifies major meteorological disasters on ancient buildings. The hierarchical model of risk influential factors is established. It contains four first-grade factors such as wind, flood, lightning and snow disaster, ten second-grade factors and twenty third-grade factors. Then, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was utilized to calculate weight of those factors. The result showed that lightning disasters had largest threat on ancient buildings among the four major kinds of meteorological disasters. Its weight was the highest of 0.383, followed by that of flood and wind disasters with weight of 0.31 and 0.22 respectively. Snow disasters had the smallest weight of 0.09. Lightning protection measures have significant influence on vulnerability of ancient buildings and on lightning disaster risks. So, to protect ancient buildings against meteorological disasters, besides characteristics of the disasters themselves, all the mentioned factors such as architectural structure, building types and environment should be taken into consideration. Specific protection strategies are then implemented according to weights of different factors.