Check out this Disaster Zone podcast, “Realtime Situational Awareness,” which deals specifically with measuring the impact of an earthquake on buildings.
For more details on the podcast, see the description below:
“With every advance on the technological front, we are getting closer and closer to having real-time situational awareness when disasters strike. This is happening via a variety of means. One of which is the seismic monitoring of buildings for what seismic (G forces) they have been exposed to. Knowing that, along with the age of the building, the construction methods and soils that they sit on, you can project the amount of damages that might have occurred to the structure. This topic and earthquakes in general are the subject of this podcast that is an interview with Taka Yokoyama, Director of Operations for Safehub.”