Mapping school exposure in Skopje region: A building-level dataset for seismic risk assessment
Description
This dataset provides a building-level exposure inventory of 198 school buildings (165 primary and 33 secondary) located in the Skopje region of North Macedonia, developed as part of a nationwide exposure model for the country's educational infrastructure. It is provided as a single structured file (.xlsx/.csv), with each row representing one school building and each column one of 25 attributes, grouped into three categories: General information – unique asset identifiers, school name and address, geographic coordinates (longitude/latitude), statistical region, school level (primary/secondary), administrative status (central/regional), municipality and its urban/rural classification, and data source reference. Building classification – structural attributes coded per the GEM Building Taxonomy v3.2, including construction material, lateral load-resisting system (LLRS), year of construction, number of storeys, and the full taxonomy string, enabling direct assignment of fragility/vulnerability functions for seismic risk assessment. Occupancy and replacement cost – gross floor area, estimated replacement cost (€), number of pupils and staff, and total day/night occupancy per building. The 198 buildings span 17 municipalities and cover approximately 534,356 m² of gross floor area, with an estimated total replacement cost of €432,828,360 and a combined school-day occupancy of 90,690 persons (81,903 pupils, 8,787 staff). The data were compiled through a bottom-up approach integrating governmental and cadastral records (Ministry of Education and Science, Agency for Real Estate Cadastre), prior IZIIS/UNICEF and World Bank-supported research projects, and publicly available online sources, with cross-validation across sources to reconcile discrepancies and closures. As the first openly available, harmonised, building-by-building exposure inventory of school buildings in the Skopje region, the dataset supports seismic risk and resilience assessment, emergency preparedness planning, retrofit prioritisation, and broader disaster risk reduction, urban planning, and public investment research. Some structural attributes (7.6% of records) are marked N/A where source information or photographic evidence was inconclusive; assumptions and full methodology are documented in the associated Data in Brief article.
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Institutions
- Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in SkopjeGrad Skopje, Skopje