Seismic Performance of a Reinforced Concrete Building in Earthquake-Prone Padang Using Incremental Dynamic Analysis

Indonesia is located in a highly seismically active region, necessitating advanced methods for assessing and improving the earthquake resilience of essential facilities such as educational buildings. This study presents a novel application of Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA), a nonlinear time-history approach within the framework of Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE), to evaluate the seismic performance of a four-story reinforced concrete school building in Padang—one of Indonesia’s most earthquake-prone cities. By incrementally scaling a diverse suite of real earthquake ground motion records, including events like Chi-Chi and Northridge, this research captures dynamic structural responses across a spectrum of seismic intensities, overcoming limitations of conventional static methods. The effective integration of IDA with local seismic design provisions (SNI 1726:2019) enables a comprehensive assessment of performance levels—Immediate Occupancy (IO), Life Safety (LS), and Collapse Prevention (CP)—under increasing seismic demand. Results demonstrate that the building maintains structural integrity without exceeding collapse prevention thresholds even at Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) levels, validating the current design codes and confirming the building’s resilience. This investigation provides critical insights for seismic design and retrofitting of essential infrastructure in high-risk seismic regions, advancing the adoption of dynamic performance-based assessment methods in Indonesia and similar earthquake-prone areas worldwide.