El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Peru is located in a high seismicity region, since is on the subduction zone between the tectonic plates of Nazca and South American, both belonging to the Pacific's Ring of Fire. Peru is a developing country, so it is of the utmost importance that the Peruvian Government is prepared to assist the thousands of casualties that may be in the face of an important seismic event. Hence seismic risk assessment of essential buildings such as schools and hospitals is necessary for structural reinforcement projects in this type of infrastructure. In this scientific article, it is shown how vulnerable the public schools of the district of San Juan de Miraflores in the city of Lima are to a seismic event. Hence FEMA P-154 Rapid Visual Screening methodology was used to assess actual condition of school infrastructure which can be used as refuge for casualties or local headquarters to emergency response. The results of the research conclude that most educational buildings present a high seismic risk and do not meet the requirements of post-earthquake use as required by the Peruvian Seismic Design Building Code.

This research employs a deterministic seismic risk assessment methodology to assess the potential damage and loss at meshblock level in the Christchurch CBD and Mount Pleasant primarily due to building damage caused by earthquake ground shaking. Expected losses in terms of dollar value and casualties are calculated for two earthquake scenarios. Findings are based on: (1) data describing the earthquake ground shaking and microzonation effects; (2) an inventory of buildings by value, floor area, replacement value, occupancy and age; (3) damage ratios defining the performance of buildings as a function of earthquake intensity; (4) daytime and night-time population distribution data and (5) casualty functions defining casualty risk as a function of building damage. A GIS serves as a platform for collecting, storing and analyzing the original and the derived data. It also allows for easy display of input and output data, providing a critical functionality for communication of outcomes. The results of this study suggest that economic losses due to building damage in the Christchurch CBD and Mount Pleasant will possibly be in the order of $5.6 and $35.3 million in a magnitude 8.0 Alpine fault earthquake and a magnitude 7.0 Ashley fault earthquake respectively. Damage to non-residential buildings constitutes the vast majority of the economic loss. Casualty numbers are expected to be between 0 and 10.

Modern societies increasingly depend on the reliable functioning of urban infrastructure systems in the aftermath of natural disasters such as hurricane and earthquake events. Apart from a sizable capital for maintenance and expansion, the reliable performance of infrastructure systems under extreme hazards also requires strategic planning and effective resource assignment. Hence, efficient system reliability and risk assessment methods are needed to provide insights to system stakeholders to understand infrastructure performance under different hazard scenarios and accordingly make informed decisions in response to them. Moreover, efficient assignment of limited financial and human resources for maintenance and retrofit actions requires new methods to identify critical system components under extreme events. Infrastructure systems such as highway bridge networks are spatially distributed systems with many linked components. Therefore, network models describing them as mathematical graphs with nodes and links naturally apply to study their performance. Owing to their complex topology, general system reliability methods are ineffective to evaluate the reliability of large infrastructure systems. This research develops computationally efficient methods such as a modified Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations algorithm for network reliability, and proposes a network reliability framework (BRAN: Bridge Reliability Assessment in Networks) that is applicable to large and complex highway bridge systems. Since the response of system components to hazard scenario events are often correlated, the BRAN framework enables accounting for correlated component failure probabilities stemming from different correlation sources. Failure correlations from non-hazard sources are particularly emphasized, as they potentially have a significant impact on network reliability estimates, and yet they have often been ignored or only partially considered in the literature of infrastructure system reliability. The developed network reliability framework is also used for probabilistic risk assessment, where network reliability is assigned as the network performance metric. Risk analysis studies may require prohibitively large number of simulations for large and complex infrastructure systems, as they involve evaluating the network reliability for multiple hazard scenarios. This thesis addresses this challenge by developing network surrogate models by statistical learning tools such as random forests. The surrogate models can replace network reliability simulations in a risk analysis framework, and significantly reduce computation times. Therefore, the proposed approach provides an alternative to the established methods to enhance the computational efficiency of risk assessments, by developing a surrogate model of the complex system at hand rather than reducing the number of analyzed hazard scenarios by either hazard consistent scenario generation or importance sampling. Nevertheless, the application of surrogate models can be combined with scenario reduction methods to improve even further the analysis efficiency. To address the problem of prioritizing system components for maintenance and retrofit actions, two advanced metrics are developed in this research to rank the criticality of system components. Both developed metrics combine system component fragilities with the topological characteristics of the network, and provide rankings which are either conditioned on specific hazard scenarios or probabilistic, based on the preference of infrastructure system stakeholders. Nevertheless, they both offer enhanced efficiency and practical applicability compared to the existing methods. The developed frameworks for network reliability evaluation, risk assessment, and component prioritization are intended to address important gaps in the state-of-the-art management and planning for infrastructure systems under natural hazards. Their application can enhance public safety by informing the decision making process for expansion, maintenance, and retrofit actions for infrastructure systems.

This research employs a deterministic seismic risk assessment methodology to assess the potential damage and loss at meshblock level in the Christchurch CBD and Mount Pleasant primarily due to building damage caused by earthquake ground shaking. Expected losses in terms of dollar value and casualties are calculated for two earthquake scenarios. Findings are based on: (1) data describing the earthquake ground shaking and microzonation effects; (2) an inventory of buildings by value, floor area, replacement value, occupancy and age; (3) damage ratios defining the performance of buildings as a function of earthquake intensity; (4) daytime and night-time population distribution data and (5) casualty functions defining casualty risk as a function of building damage. A GIS serves as a platform for collecting, storing and analyzing the original and the derived data. It also allows for easy display of input and output data, providing a critical functionality for communication of outcomes. The results of this study suggest that economic losses due to building damage in the Christchurch CBD and Mount Pleasant will possibly be in the order of $5.6 and $35.3 million in a magnitude 8.0 Alpine fault earthquake and a magnitude 7.0 Ashley fault earthquake respectively. Damage to non-residential buildings constitutes the vast majority of the economic loss. Casualty numbers are expected to be between 0 and 10.

<p>Developing countries typically suffer far greater than developed countries as a result of earthquakes. Poor socioeconomic conditions often lead to poorly constructed homes that are vulnerable to damage during earthquakes. Literature review in this study highlights the lack of existing fragility curves for buildings in developing countries. Furthermore, fragility curves derived using empirical data are almost nonexistent due to the scarcity of post-earthquake damage data and insufficient ground motion recordings in developing countries. Therefore, this research proposes a methodology for developing empirical fragility curves using ground motion data in the form of USGS ShakeMaps.</p> <p>The methodology has been applied to a case study consisting of damage data collected in Bantul Regency, Indonesia in the aftermath of the May 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake in Indonesia. Fragility curves for non-engineered single-storey unreinforced masonry (URM) homes have been derived using the damage dataset for three ground motion parameters; peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV), and pseudo-spectral acceleration (PSA). The fragility curves indicate the high seismic vulnerability of non-engineered URM homes in developing countries. There is a probability of 80% that a seismic event with a PGA of only 0.1g will induce significant cracking of the walls and reduction in the load carrying capacity of a URM home, resulting in moderate damage or collapse. Fragility curves as a function of PGA and PSA were found to reasonably represent the damage data; however, fits for several PGV fragility curves could not be obtained. The case study illustrated the extension of ShakeMaps to fragility curves, and the derived fragility curves supplement to the limited collection of empirical fragility curves for developing countries. Finally, a comparison with an existing fragility study highlights the significant influence of the derivation method used on the fragility curves. The diversity in construction techniques and material quality in developing countries, particularly for non-engineered cannot be sufficiently represented through simplified or idealized analytical models. Therefore, the empirical method is considered to be the most suitable method for deriving fragility curves for structures in developing countries.</p> / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

<div>Ensuring the resilience of a state’s transportation network is necessary to guarantee an acceptable quality of life for the people the network serves. A lack of resilience in the wake of a seismic event directly impacts the states’ overall safety and economic vitality. With the recent identification of the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone (WBSV), Department of Transportations (DOTs) like Indiana’s have increased awareness for the vulnerability of their bridge network. The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) has been steadily working to reduce the seismic vulnerability of bridges in the state in particular in the southwest Vincennes District. In the corridor formed by I-69 built in the early 2000s the bridge design is required to consider seismic actions. However, with less recent bridges and those outside the Vincennes District being built without consideration for seismic effects, the potential for vulnerability exists. As such, the objective of this thesis is to develop a robust seismic vulnerability assessment methodology which can assess the overall vulnerability of Indiana’s critical bridge network. </div><div><br></div><div>A representative sample of structures in Indiana’s bridge inventory, which prioritized the higher seismic risk areas, covered the entire state geographically, and ensured robust superstructure details, was chosen. The sample was used to carry a deterministic seismic vulnerability assessment, applicable to all superstructure-substructure combinations. Analysis considerations, such as the calculation of critical capacity measures like moment-curvature and a pushover analysis, are leveraged to accurately account for non-linear effects like force redistribution. This effect is a result of non-simultaneous structural softening in multi-span bridges that maintain piers of varying heights and stiffnesses. These analysis components are incorporated into a dynamic analysis to allow for the more precise identification of vulnerable details in Indiana’s bridge inventory.</div><div><br></div><div>The results of this deterministic seismic assessment procedure are also leveraged to identify trends in the structural response of the sample set. These trends are used to identify limit state thresholds for the development of fragility functions. This conditional probabilistic representation of bridge damage is coupled with the probability of earthquake occurrence to predict the performance of the structure for a given return period. This probabilistic approach alongside a Monte Carlo simulation is applied to assess the vulnerability of linked bridges along key-access corridors throughout the state. With this robust seismic vulnerability methodology, DOTs will have the capability of identifying vulnerable corridors throughout the state allowing for the proactive prioritization of retrofits resulting in the improved seismic performance and resiliency of their transportation network.</div>

The research attempts to resolve which method of estimation is the most consistent for the parameters of the earthquake model, and how these different methods of estimation, as well as other changes, in the earthquake model parameters affect the damage estimates for a specific area. The research also investigates different methods of parameter estimation in the context of the log-linear relationship characterised by the Gutenberg-Richter relation. Traditional methods are compared to those methods that take uncertainty in the underlying data into account. Alternative methods based on Bayesian statistics are investigated briefly. The efficiency of the feasible methods is investigated by comparing the results for a large number of synthetic earthquake catalogues for which the parameters are known and errors have been incorporated into each observation. In the second part of the study, the effects of changes in key parameters of the earthquake model on damage estimates are investigated. This includes an investigation of the different methods of estimation and their effect on the damage estimates. It is found that parameter estimates are affected by observation errors. If errors are not included in the method of estimation, the estimate is subject to bias. The nature of the errors determines the level of bias. It is concluded that uncertainty in the data used in earthquake parameter estimates is largely a function of the quality of the data that is available. The inaccuracy of parameter estimates depends on the nature of the errors that are present in the data. In turn, the nature of the errors in an earthquake catalogue depends on the method of compilation of the catalogue and can vary from being negligible, for single source catalogues for an area with a sophisticated seismograph network, to fairly impactful, for historical earthquake catalogues that predate seismograph networks. Probabilistic seismic risk assessment is used as a catastrophe modelling tool to circumvent the problem of scarce loss data in areas of low seismicity and is applied in this study for the greater Cape Town region in South Africa. The results of the risk assessment demonstrate that seemingly small changes in underlying earthquake parameters as a result of the incorporation of errors can lead to significant changes in loss estimates for buildings in an area of low seismicity. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / Insurance and Actuarial Science / MSc / Unrestricted

The traditional construction practice used in masonry buildings throughout the world is limited to walls with rectangular cross sections that, when reinforced with steel bars, typically accommodate only single-leg horizontal ties and a single layer of vertical reinforcement. This arrangement provides no confinement at the wall toes, and it may lead to instability in critical wall zones and significant structural damage during seismic events. Conversely, the development of a new building system, constructed with reinforced masonry (RM) walls with boundary elements, allows closed ties to be used as confinement reinforcement, thus minimizing such instability and its negative consequences. Relative to traditional walls, walls with boundary elements have enhanced performance because they enable the compression reinforcement to remain effective up to much larger displacement demands, resulting in a damage tolerant system and eventually, more resilient buildings under extreme events. Research on the system-level (complete building) performance of RM walls with boundary elements is, at the time of publication of this dissertation, nonexistent in open literature. What little research has been published on this innovative building system has focused only on investigating the component-level performance of RM walls with boundary elements under lateral loads. To address this knowledge gap, the dissertation presents a comprehensive research program that covered: component-level performance simulation; system-level (complete building) experimental testing; seismic risk assessment tools; and simplified analytical models to facilitate adoption of the developed new building system. In addition, and in order to effectively mobilize the knowledge generated through the research program to stakeholders, the work has been directly related to building codes in Canada and the USA (NBCC and ASCE-7) as well as other standards including FEMA P695 (FEMA 2009) (Chapter 2), TMS 402 and CSA S304 (Chapter 3), FEMA P58 (FEMA 2012) (Chapter 4), and ASCE-41 (Chapter 5). Chapter 1 of the dissertation highlights its objectives, focus, scope and general organization. The simulation in Chapter 2 is focused on evaluating the component-level overstrength, period-based ductility, and seismic collapse margin ratios under the maximum considered earthquakes. Whereas previous studies have shown that traditional RM walls might not meet the collapse risk criteria established by FEMA P695, the analysis presented in this chapter clearly shows that RM shear walls with boundary elements not only meet the collapse risk criteria, but also exceed it with a significant margin. Following the component-level simulation presented in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 focused on presenting the results of a complete two-story asymmetrical RM shear wall building with boundary elements, experimentally tested under simulated seismic loading. This effort was aimed at demonstrating the discrepancies between the way engineers design buildings (as individual components) and the way these buildings actually behave as an integrated system, comprised of these components. In addition, to evaluate the enhanced resilience of the new building system, the tested building was designed to have the same lateral resistance as previously tested building with traditional RM shear walls, thus facilitating direct comparison. The experimental results yielded two valuable findings: 1) it clearly demonstrated the overall performance enhancements of the new building system in addition to its reduced reinforcement cost; and 2) it highlighted the drawbacks of the building acting as a system compared to a simple summation of its individual components. In this respect, although the slab diaphragm-wall coupling enhanced the building lateral capacity, this enhancement also meant that other unpredictable and undesirable failure modes could become the weaker links, and therefore dominate the performance of the building system. Presentation of these findings has attracted much attention of codes and standards committees (CSA S304 and TMS 402/ACI 530/ASCE 5) in Canada and the USA, as it resulted in a paradigm shift on how the next-generation of building codes (NBCC and ASCE-7) should be developed to address system-levels performance aspects. Chapter 4 introduced an innovative system-level risk assessment methodology by integrating the simulation and experimental test results of Chapters 2 and 3. In this respect, the experimentally validated simulations were used to generate new system-level fragility curves that provide a realistic assessment of the overall building risk under different levels of seismic hazard. Although, within the scope of this dissertation, the methodology has been applied only on buildings constructed with RM walls with boundary elements, the developed new methodology is expected to be adopted by stakeholders of other new and existing building systems and to be further implemented in standards based on the current FEMA P58 risk quantification approaches. Finally, and in order to translate the dissertation findings into tools that can be readily used by stakeholders to design more resilient buildings in the face of extreme events, simplified backbone and hysteretic models were developed in Chapter 5 to simulate the nonlinear response of RM shear wall buildings with different configurations. These models can be adapted to perform the nonlinear static and dynamic procedures that are specified in the ASCE-41 standards for both existing and new building systems. The research in this chapter is expected to have a major positive impact, not only in terms of providing more realistic model parameters for exiting building systems, but also through the introduction of analytical models for new more resilient building systems to be directly implemented in future editions of the ASCE-41. This dissertation presents a cohesive body of work that is expected to influence a real change in terms of how we think about, design, and construct buildings as complex systems comprised of individual components. The dissertation’s overarching hypothesis is that previous disasters have not only exposed the vulnerability of traditional building systems, but have also demonstrated the failure of the current component-by-component design approaches to produce resilient building systems and safer communities under extreme events. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract : Fragility curves are a very useful tool for seismic risk assessment of bridges. A fragility curve describes the probability of a structure being damaged beyond a specific damage state for different levels of ground shaking. Since more than half of all bridges in the province of Quebec (Canada) are in service for more than 30 years and that these bridges were designed at that time without seismic provisions, generating fragility curves for these structures is more than necessary. These curves can be used to estimate damage and economic loss due to an earthquake and prioritize repairs or seismic rehabilitations of bridges. Previous studies have shown that seismic damage experienced by bridges is not only a function of the epicentral distance and the severity of an earthquake but also of the structural characteristics of the bridge and the soil type on which it is built. Current methods for generating fragility curves for bridges do not account for soil conditions. In this work, analytical fragility curves are generated for multi-span continuous concrete girder bridges, which account for 21% of all bridges in Quebec, for the different soil profile types specified in the Canadian highway bridge design code (CAN/CSA-S6-06). These curves take into account the different types of abutment and foundation specific to these bridges. The fragility curves are obtained from time-history nonlinear analyses using 120 synthetic accelerograms generated for eastern Canadian regions, and from a Monte Carlo simulation to combine the fragility curves of the different structural components of a bridge||Résumé : Les courbes de fragilité sont un outil très utile pour l’évaluation du risque sismique des ponts. Une courbe de fragilité représente la probabilité qu'une structure soit endommagée au-delà d'un état d'endommagement donné pour différents niveaux de tremblement de terre. Étant donné que plus de la moitié des ponts dans la province de Québec (Canada) ont plus de 30 années de service et que ces ponts n'ont pas été conçus à l'époque à l'aide de normes sismiques, la génération de courbes de fragilité pour ces structures est plus que nécessaire. Ces courbes peuvent servir à estimer les dommages et les pertes économiques causés par un tremblement de terre et à prioriser les réparations ou les réhabilitations sismiques des ponts. Des études antérieures ont montré que l'endommagement subi par les ponts suite à un tremblement de terre n'est pas seulement fonction de la distance de l'épicentre et de la sévérité du tremblement de terre, mais aussi des caractéristiques structurales du pont et du type de sol sur lequel il est construit. Les méthodes actuelles pour générer les courbes de fragilité des ponts ne tiennent pas compte des conditions du sol. Dans ce travail de recherche, des courbes de fragilité analytiques sont générées pour les ponts à portées multiples à poutres continues en béton armé, soit pour 21% des ponts au Québec, pour les différents types de sol spécifiés dans le Code canadien sur le calcul des ponts routiers (CAN/CSA-S6-06). Ces courbes prennent en compte les différents types de culée et de fondation spécifiques à ces ponts. Les courbes de fragilité sont obtenues à partir d'analyses temporelles non linéaires réalisées à l'aide de 120 accélérogrammes synthétiques généres pour l’est du Canada, et d'une simulation de Monte Carlo pour combiner les courbes de fragilité des différentes composantes du pont.

Recent research interests in studying the performance of different seismic force resisting systems (SFRS) have been shifting from component- (individual walls) to system-level (complete building) studies. Although there is wealth of knowledge on component-level performance of reinforced masonry shear walls (RMSW) under seismic loading, a gap still exists in understanding the response of these components within a complete system. Consequently, this study’s main objective is to investigate the influence of the diaphragm’s out-of-plane stiffness on the seismic response of RMSW buildings. In addition, the study aims to synthesize how this influence can be implemented in different seismic design approaches and assessment frameworks. To meet these objectives a two-story scaled asymmetrical RMSW building was tested under quasi-static cyclic loading. The analysis of the test results showed that the floor diaphragms’ out-of-plane stiffness played an important role in flexurally coupling the RMSW aligned along the loading direction with those walls orthogonal to it. This system-level aspect affected not only the different wall strength and displacement demands but also the failure mechanism sequence and the building twist response. The results of the study also showed that neglecting diaphragm flexural coupling influence on the RMSW at the system-level may result in unconservative designs and possibly undesirable failure modes. To address these findings, an analytical model was developed that can account for the aforementioned influences, in which, simplified load-displacement relationships were developed to predict RMSW component- and system-level responses under lateral seismic loads. This model is expected to give better predictions of the system response which can be implemented, within the model limitations, in forced- and displacement-based seismic design approaches. In addition, and in order to adapt to the increasing interest in more resilient buildings, this study presents an approach to calculate the system robustness based on the experimental data. Finally, literature shows that the vast majority of the loss models available for RMSW systems were based on individual component testing and/or engineering judgment. Consequently, this study proposes system damage states in lieu of component damage states in order to enhance the prediction capabilities of such models. The current dissertation highlights the significant influence of the diaphragm out-of-plane stiffness on the system-level response that may alter the RMSW response to seismic events; an issue that need to be addressed in design codes and standards. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)