Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 266-279). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 283-295).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). "April 2009." Includes bibliographical references. Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "December 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-89). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. / Committee Co-Chair: DesRoches, Reginald; Committee Co-Chair: Leon, Roberto T.; Committee Member: Craig, James I.; Committee Member: Goodno, Barry; Committee Member: White, Donald W. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

Previously published as first author's thesis (Ph. D. in Engineering--University of California, Berkeley, 2004). / "June 2005." Includes bibliographical references. Also available as an electronic document from the Earthquake Engineering Online Archive Earthquake: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/elibrary.

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Earthquakes, such as the ones capable of affecting the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, can have a devastating effect on the environment that people live and work in. The purpose of this thesis is to examine methods of dealing with the hazards and problems created by existing, often historically significant, unreinforced buildings in earthquake-prone areas. Gaining an understanding of the complexity of this problem and the issues involved in establishing hazard mitigation policies gives insight into the policy-making process. The research indicates that a number of internal and external factors affect the formulation, adoption, and implementation of hazard mitigation policies. Despite limited awareness of the problem, low political salience of the issue, and limited resources in most communities, there are many steps that can be taken that will reduce the public's exposure to the risks created by unreinforced buildings and strengthen historically significant buildings that hold value, socially, economically, and culturally. Establishing more extensive mitigative measures, such as implementing a seismic retrofit policy, requires a decision-making process that must involve the people who live and work within that community. Each community, through a process of consultation with the stakeholders, needs to decide if it is in their interest to pursue hazard mitigation strategies to reduce the seismic risk. There is a need to integrate hazard mitigation strategies into the daily decision-making process of politicians and planners. The thesis concludes with some points for stakeholders to consider in designing policy to reduce the earthquake hazard that all the communities in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia face. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

<p>The potential for damaging earthquakes in Indiana from the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) has been known for 200 years. However, the identification of the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone (WVSZ) has increased the awareness of the seismic risk in Indiana. The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) has been preparing for the occurrence of a large event by reducing the vulnerability of its bridge network, specifically in the Vincennes district. To facilitate the work of the State of Indiana, in this thesis the development of a simplified assessment procedure for the bridges typical in Indiana is presented. The thesis also includes a proposed simplified assessment tool, Indiana Seismic Assessment Tool (INSAT) to rapidly assess the vulnerability of INDOT’s bridges. To understand the behavior and vulnerabilities typical to bridges in Indiana, a set of 100 representative bridges was chosen for a detailed seismic assessment. The assessment is completed using information from the bridge drawings and 100 synthetic ground motion time-histories. The results of the detailed assessment, found in the SPR 4222 final report, are used to develop trends in mass and stiffness across bridge types, to identify vulnerability thresholds for application in the simplified assessment, and to validate the simplified assessment procedure.</p><p> </p><p>The simplified seismic assessment procedure presented in this thesis and INSAT leverage information found in BIAS. However, in its current state, BIAS does not contain enough information to perform a robust seismic assessment. Eight data items are recommended for implementation into BIAS in order to carry out a simplified assessment. These eight data items are the substructure type, the abutment type, the number of elements, the element height, length, and width, the deck thickness, and a height ratio flag. While some of these items can be estimated, the best version of the simplified assessment utilizes all of the recommended data items and leads to an 87% agreement between the vulnerability classifications of the simplified assessment and the detailed assessment.</p>

Soil liquefaction, or loss of strength due to excess pore water pressures generated during dynamic loading, is a main cause of damage during earthquakes. When a soil liquefies (referred to as triggering), it may lose its ability to support overlying structures, deform vertically or laterally, or cause buoyant uplift of buried utilities. Empirical liquefaction models, used to predict liquefaction potential based upon in-situ soil index property measurements and anticipated level of seismic loading, are the standard of practice for assessing liquefaction triggering. However, many current models do not incorporate predictor variable uncertainty or do so in a limited fashion. Additionally, past model creation and validation lacks the same rigor found in predictive modeling in other fields. This study examines the details of creating and validating an empirical liquefaction model, using the existing worldwide cone penetration test liquefaction database. Our study implements a logistic regression within a Bayesian measurement error framework to incorporate uncertainty in predictor variables and allow for a probabilistic interpretation of model parameters. Our model is built using a hierarchal approach account for intra-event correlation in loading variables and differences in event sample sizes that mirrors the random/mixed effects models used in ground motion prediction equation development. The model is tested using an independent set of case histories from recent New Zealand earthquakes, and performance metrics are reported. We found that a Bayesian measurement error model considering two predictor variables, qc,1 and CSR, decreases model uncertainty while maintaining predictive utility for new data. Two forms of model uncertainty were considered – the spread of probabilities predicted by mean values of regression coefficients (apparent uncertainty) and the standard deviations of the predictive distributions from fully probabilistic inference. Additionally, we found models considering friction ratio as a predictor variable performed worse than the two variable case and will require more data or informative priors to be adequately estimated.