Determining the earthquake risk of buildings in a town or settlement has lately become a more prominent issue. The process can provide important data for governments, authorities, disaster management and insurance companies to better understand risks to many buildings and engineering systems rather than a single building. This paper addresses the rapid evaluation of a large number of similar buildings in one area using a forecasting approach. Back-casting mainly considers the effect of previous earthquakes by listing and categorizing the damaged buildings and casualties. Forecasting offers a method to evaluate the possible damages in advance, however many uncertainties need to be taken into consideration. A fast and simple method should be developed to avoid the time and expertise required from research-based approaches. The steps involve determination of the hazard, assessing building stock, and computing vulnerability. The method for determination of vulnerability functions is a non-linear static analysis using a bilinear approximation of the capacity curve, assuming first mode force distribution and mode shape thus linear strength distribution. From the curve of the seismic demand and the shear capacity of the building, the vulnerability function of the building can be obtained. These vulnerability functions should be derived for typical layouts; offering a family of curves allowing the experts to decide the vulnerability category of a specific building on-site based on visual screening. With the given value of possible PGA (peak ground acceleration), expected damages can then be estimated.