Improving The Earthquake Resilience Of Buildings

Engineers are always interested in the worst-case scenario. One of the most important and challenging missions of structural engineers may be to narrow the range of unexpected incidents in building structural design. Redundancy, robustness and resilience play an important role in such circumstances. Improving the Earthquake Resilience of Buildings: The worst case approach discusses the importance of worst-scenario approach for improved earthquake resilience of buildings and nuclear reactor facilities. Improving the Earthquake Resilience of Buildings: The worst case approach consists of two parts. The first part deals with the characterization and modeling of worst or critical ground motions on inelastic structures and the related worst-case scenario in the structural design of ordinary simple building structures. The second part of the book focuses on investigating the worst-case scenario for passively controlled and base-isolated buildings. This allows for detailed consideration of a range of topics including: A consideration of damage of building structures in the critical excitation method for improved building-earthquake resilience, A consideration of uncertainties of structural parameters in structural control and base-isolation for improved building-earthquake resilience, and New insights in structural design of super high-rise buildings under long-period ground motions. Improving the Earthquake Resilience of Buildings: The worst case approach is a valuable resource for researchers and engineers interested in learning and applying the worst-case scenario approach in the seismic-resistant design for more resilient structures.

The United States will certainly be subject to damaging earthquakes in the future. Some of these earthquakes will occur in highly populated and vulnerable areas. Coping with moderate earthquakes is not a reliable indicator of preparedness for a major earthquake in a populated area. The recent, disastrous, magnitude-9 earthquake that struck northern Japan demonstrates the threat that earthquakes pose. Moreover, the cascading nature of impacts-the earthquake causing a tsunami, cutting electrical power supplies, and stopping the pumps needed to cool nuclear reactors-demonstrates the potential complexity of an earthquake disaster. Such compound disasters can strike any earthquake-prone populated area. National Earthquake Resilience presents a roadmap for increasing our national resilience to earthquakes. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) is the multi-agency program mandated by Congress to undertake activities to reduce the effects of future earthquakes in the United States. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-the lead NEHRP agency-commissioned the National Research Council (NRC) to develop a roadmap for earthquake hazard and risk reduction in the United States that would be based on the goals and objectives for achieving national earthquake resilience described in the 2008 NEHRP Strategic Plan. National Earthquake Resilience does this by assessing the activities and costs that would be required for the nation to achieve earthquake resilience in 20 years. National Earthquake Resilience interprets resilience broadly to incorporate engineering/science (physical), social/economic (behavioral), and institutional (governing) dimensions. Resilience encompasses both pre-disaster preparedness activities and post-disaster response. In combination, these will enhance the robustness of communities in all earthquake-vulnerable regions of our nation so that they can function adequately following damaging earthquakes. While National Earthquake Resilience is written primarily for the NEHRP, it also speaks to a broader audience of policy makers, earth scientists, and emergency managers.

Resilient buildings and cities are in the center of common interests in modern academic communities for science and engineering related to built environment. Resilience of buildings and cities against multidisciplinary risks, e.g. earthquakes, strong winds, floods, etc., is strongly related to the sustainability of buildings and cities in which reduction of damage during a disaster and fast recovery from the damage are key issues. The reduction of damage is related to the level of resistance of buildings and the time of recovery is affected by the amount of supply of damaged members, assurance of restoration work, etc. Robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity are four key factors for supporting the full realization of design and construction of resilient buildings and cities. This research topic gathers cutting-edge and innovative research from various aspects, e.g. robustness of buildings and cities against earthquake risk, structural control and base-isolation for controlling damage risks, quantification of resilience measures, structural health monitoring, innovative structural engineering techniques for higher safety of buildings, resilience actions and tools at the urban scale, etc.

This eBook is the third in a series of books on the critical earthquake response of elastic or elastic-plastic structures under near-fault or long-duration ground motions, and includes four original research papers which were published in the specialty section Earthquake Engineering in ‘Frontiers in Built Environment’. Several extensions of the first eBook and the second eBook are included here. The first article is on the earthquake resilience of residential houses after repeated ground motions with high intensity. The 2016 Kumamoto earthquake brought a significant impact on the earthquake resilience of residential houses under repeated ground motions with high intensity in a few days. The necessary strength upgrade withstanding two repeated high-intensity ground motions was found to be 1.5. The second article is concerned with the smart enhancement of earthquake resilience of building structures under both near-fault and long-duration ground motions. A hybrid system of base-isolation and building connection control was proposed and its earthquake resilience to near-fault and long-duration ground motions was evaluated by a double impulse and a multiple impulse. It was demonstrated that the base-isolation is effective for near-fault ground motions and the building connection system using passive dampers is effective for long-duration ground motions. The third article is related to the robustness evaluation of elastic-plastic base-isolated high-rise buildings under resonant near-fault ground motions. The robustness function was introduced to evaluate quantitatively the robustness of elastic-plastic base-isolated high-rise buildings. The fourth article is an extension of the previously proposed energy balance approach to a bilinear elastic-plastic single-degree-of-freedom system under a long-duration sinusoidal ground motion. A historical difficulty in nonlinear vibration posed by Caughey (1960) and Iwan (1961) has been overcome in a smart manner after half a century. The approach presented in this eBook, together with the previous eBooks, is an epoch-making accomplishment to open the door for simpler and deeper understanding of structural reliability and resilience of built environments in the elastic-plastic and nonlinear range.

Learn from the personal experience and insights of leading earthquake engineering specialists as they examine the lessons from disasters of the last 30 years and propose a path to earthquake safety worldwide Why Do Buildings Collapse in Earthquakes?: Building for Safety in Seismic Areas delivers an insightful and comprehensive analysis of the key lessons taught by building failures during earthquakes around the world. The book uses empirical evidence to describe the successes of earthquake engineering and disaster preparedness, as well as the failures that may have had tragic consequences. Readers will learn what makes buildings in earthquake zones vulnerable, what can be done to design, build and maintain those buildings to reduce or eliminate that vulnerability, and what can be done to protect building occupants. Those who are responsible for the lives and safety of building occupants and visitors - architects, designers, engineers, and building owners or managers - will learn how to provide adequate safety in earthquake zones. The text offers useful and accessible answers to anyone interested in natural disasters generally and those who have specific concerns about the impact of earthquakes on the built environment. Readers will benefit from the inclusion of: A thorough introduction to how buildings have behaved in earthquakes, including a description of the world’s most lethal earthquakes and the fatality trend over time An exploration of how buildings are constructed around the world, including considerations of the impact of climate and seismicity on home design A discussion of what happens during an earthquake, including the types and levels of ground motion, landslides, tsunamis, and sequential effects, and how different types of buildings tend to behave in response to those phenomena What different stakeholders can do to improve the earthquake safety of their buildings The owners and managers of buildings in earthquake zones and those responsible for the safety of people who occupy or visit them will find Why Do Buildings Collapse in Earthquakes? Building for Safety in Seismic Areas essential reading, as will all architects, designers and engineers who design or refurbish buildings in earthquake zones.

There are many regions worldwide which are susceptible to extreme loads such as earthquakes. These can cause loss of life and adverse impacts on civil infrastructures, the environment, and communities. A series of methods and measures have been used to mitigate the effects of these extreme loads. The adopted approaches and methods must enable civil structures to be resilient and sustainable. Therefore, to reduce damage and downtime in addition to protecting life and promoting safety, new resilient structure technologies must be proposed and developed. This special issue book focuses on methods of enhancing the sustainability and resilience of civil infrastructures in the event of extreme loads (e.g., earthquakes). This book contributes proposals of and theoretical, numerical, and experimental research on new and resilient civil structures and their structural performance under extreme loading events. These works will certainly play a significant role in promoting the application of new recoverable structures. Moreover, this book also introduces some case studies discussing the implementation of low-damage structural systems in buildings as well as articles on the development of design philosophies and performance criteria for resilient buildings and new sustainable communities.

The Bled workshops have traditionally produced reference documents providing visions for the future development of earthquake engineering as foreseen by leading researchers in the field. The participants of the 2011 workshop built on the tradition of these events initiated by Professors Fajfar and Krawinkler to honor their important research contributions and have now produced a book providing answers to crucial questions in today’s earthquake engineering: “What visible changes in the design practice have been brought about by performance-based seismic engineering? What are the critical needs for future advances? What actions should be taken to respond to those needs?” The key answer is that research interests should go beyond the narrow technical aspects and that the seismic resilience of society as a whole should become an essential part of the planning and design process. The book aims to provide essential guidelines for researchers, professionals and students in the field of earthquake engineering. It will also be of particular interest for all those working at insurance companies, governmental, civil protection and emergency management agencies that are responsible for assessing and planning community resilience. The introductory chapter of the book is based on the keynote presentation given at the workshop by the late Professor Helmut Krawinkler. As such, the book includes Helmut’s last and priceless address to the engineering community, together with his vision and advice for the future development of performance-based design, earthquake engineering and seismic risk management.

The academic biomedical research community is a hub of employment, economic productivity, and scientific progress. Academic research institutions are drivers of economic development in their local and state economies and, by extension, the national economy. Beyond the economic input that the academic biomedical research community both receives and provides, it generates knowledge that in turn affects society in myriad ways. The United States has experienced and continues to face the threat of disasters, and, like all entities, the academic biomedical research community can be affected. Recent disasters, from hurricanes to cyber-attacks, and their consequences have shown that the investments of the federal government and of the many other entities that sponsor academic research are not uniformly secure. First and foremost, events that damage biomedical laboratories and the institutions that house them can have impacts on the safety and well-being of humans and research animals. Furthermore, disasters can affect career trajectories, scientific progress, and financial stability at the individual and institutional levels. Strengthening the Disaster Resilience of the Academic Biomedical Research Community offers recommendations and guidance to enhance the disaster resilience of the academic biomedical research community, with a special focus on the potential actions researchers, academic research institutions, and research sponsors can take to mitigate the impact of future disasters.