Iran has spent about US $3 billion on school retrofit since 2005 and will spend over US $4 billion in the next few years. The Iranians seek to learn effective state-of-the-art procedures from experts around the world, as well as to share their own initial methods and experiences in the school retrofit project. Also, because of the worldwide importance of seismic retrofit of masonry structures, this meeting provides a forum for sharing effective techniques on this topic, and for discussing ambiguities in seismic retrofitting codes.
SYNER-G is a European collaborative research project focusing on systemic seismic vulnerability and risk analysis of buildings, lifelines and infrastructures. The originality of the project is the systemic approach of the vulnerability and risk assessment of complex interacting systems. The research consortium relies on the active participation of twelve partners from Europe, one from USA and one from Japan. The consortium includes partners from the consulting and the insurance industry.
Main goals of SYNER-G are:
Within this special session the proposed state of the art methods and developed tools will be presented, along with representative results from the case studies. The session is intended to researchers, professionals, stakeholders as well as representatives from civil protection, insurance and industry areas involved in seismic risk assessment and management.
URL: www.syner-g.eu
Current empirical ground motion prediction equations (GMPE) may fail for the prediction of near-source ground motion and its spatial variability for use in seismic hazard and risk assessment and earthquake-resistant structural design. That is because these GMPE are based solely on recorded data which are sparse in the near field. On the other hand, recent development of numerical simulations of earthquakes based on physics of the causative source rupture and wave propagation have contributed to substantial advances in our understanding of different aspects related to the earthquake mechanism and near source ground motion. These models have greater potential for identifying and predicting the variability of near-source ground dominated by the source and/or geological effects. An ad-hoc alternative to fill the lack of GMPE is the use of physics based numerical models to build “hybrid physics-based GMPE”. This session is supported on invited presentations specially dedicated to it. Key speakers are Norm Abrahamson (UC Berkeley/Pacific Gas & Electric Co), Gail Atkinson (University of Western Ontario) and Saburoh Midorikawa (Tokyo Institute of Technology).
March 11, 2011 Great East Japan earthquake (Mw9.0) developed extensive damage due to tsunami, ground motions and liquefaction over an extensive area in the north-east (Tohoku) Japan. Fire also resulted in extensive damage to houses which were collapsed by tsunami. The Great East Japan earthquake revealed the fact that an infrequent and high consequence event can cause unforeseeable damage once it happened. A serious accident at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station made the problem complex. We have to learn as many lessons as possible from this larger than expected earthquake. This Special Session offers presentations for damage and engineering lessons learned from the earthquake.
The observed performance following recent earthquakes and in recent laboratory tests strongly suggest that design provisions for structural walls need to reevaluated. As well, new modeling approaches have recently been developed and new tests have been conducted to help validate these models. The level of research activities related to behavior, design, and modeling structural walls over the past ten years has increased significantly, and especially since the 14WCEE, suggesting that a special session is needed to highlight recent research results and to identity high-priority research needs. As well, the session would serve to educate students, researchers, and especially practicing engineers to these issues and current trends.
The session will be organized to include a broad array of individuals actively involved in the testing and modeling of structural walls, as well as design professionals with detailed background in design and codes. The precise organization of the session is still under consideration; however, in general, it will be organized around four major themes: (1) Observations in recent earthquakes, (2) Observations from recent tests, (3) Modeling approaches and model validation, and (4) Research needs and issues that need attention in buildings codes and challenges associated with achieving progress. Various experts from around the world will present short summaries on the first three topics, followed by panel discussions to allow general comments and audience participation. For the final topic, a panel will be convened to briefly summarize findings from the first three topics and to enable broader discussion.
A multi-year international research seismic risk mitigation program named SERAMAR (Seismic Risk Assessment and Mitigation in the Antakya-Maras Region on the Basis of Microzonation, Vulnerability and Preparedness Studies) has been completed in the region of Antakya (historic Antioch on the Orontes) in southern Turkey. The project collaborators were Earth¬quake Damage Analysis Center (EDAC) of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany; Mustafa Kemal University, Antakya, Turkey; and the Earthquake Engineering Research Center of Middle East Technical University (EERC-METU), Ankara, Turkey.
The region straddles the area where the Dead Sea Fault Zone (DSFZ) blends into the East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ), and is now an economically fast growing, increasingly more densely populated area that has been visited in its seismic past by many destructive earthquakes. The reduction of the risk in the urban centers is therefore of great importance for the cities that are exposed to the hazard. The main objective of the SERAMAR project has been to utilize current tools for earthquake risk assessment and to establish a unique partner-ship between universities, professional associations and local governments that might serve as a model for similar future activities in other seismically susceptible areas of the world.
An intrinsic characteristic of the SERAMAR project has been the interdisciplinary attempt combining the research areas of structural earthquake engineering with engineering seis¬mo-logy and sociology. Building stock surveys for damageability, social and economic studies for risk assessment for formulating feasible administrative policies are results which will be presented including their incorporation into the preparation of a master plan.
The building stock composition offers (RC frame structures, traditional and masonry buildings) a great variety of building types and the general problems to identify their vulnerability and to decide upon relevant rehabilitation mitigation strategies. To come up with reliable damage scenarios also suited for Master Plan decisions the building vulnerability has to be carefully evaluated. Without further consideration it becomes clear, that the central historical parts which are dominated by traditional (masonry) building types will indicate experience the highest damage concentration and therefore considerably affects the mitigation strategies and are of particular interest.
The unique features of the Special Session will be: International collaboration for risk reduc¬tion; Intrinsic characteristics and sociological composition; Lack of prevention and prepared¬ness and their possible consequences; Hybrid techniques for vulnerability assessment and their application to local predominant building types (Masonry and RC frame structures)
A very strong earthquake of Mw7.2 occurred in eastern Turkey on October 23, 2011 along an unknown blind thrust fault. The causative fault was 30 km from Erciş, a city with a population of 140,000 and 50 km from the regional provincial center Van with a population of 1.2 million. A total of about 100 4-8 story RC buildings collapsed in Erciş and Van, killing a total of 604 people and injuring more than 2 000. Most of the damage was in Erciş, perhaps due to rupture directivity. Occurrence of the earthquake on a sunny Sunday afternoon saved many lives. All collapsed buildings had been built less than 20 years ago, and had proper construction and occupation permits.
Seventeen days after the first earthquake, a second earthquake occurred along another unknown fault right underneath Van. Although smaller in magnitude, it caused significant damage in Van surpassing the damages from the first quake. Two hotel buildings that had been declared safe after the first quake collapsed and killed another 40 people. These collapses ignited huge public reaction and made the recovery phase very difficult for the disaster officials who were already highly strained under difficult severe winter conditions.
The important topics of discussion in the special session which make these earthquakes special are,
This Special Session will present the mission and vision of the Global Earthquake Model by focusing on the efforts to produce a holistic global earthquake risk model that integrates metrics of social vulnerability and resilience with the on-going activities of hazard and physical risk. This integrated global earthquake risk model and the tools used to build it will be rendered available to the scientific community through a web-based platform OpenQuake; the latter will be showcased during the Special Session, focusing in particular to the details of the decision-support tools of the platform.
The session will include the following presentations:
NIKER and PERPETUATE are European FP7 Research Projects centered to earthquake protection of cultural heritage in European and Mediterranean countries, coordinated by Prof. Claudio Modena and Prof. Sergio Lagomarsino, respectively.
Started both in 2010, NIKER and PERPETUATE projects aggregate 28 institutions and hundreds of researchers dealing with laboratory and in-situ experimental tests, numerical modeling, monitoring and applications to relevant case studies.
This special session would like to promote a discussion on some topics related to the seismic assessment of cultural heritage, which still represent open issues (i.e. definition of limit states, suitable modeling strategies, development of new integrated materials, technologies and tools for the seismic strengthening of historical buildings etc.).
Two external experts, Prof. Robin Spence and Prof. André Plumier, will introduce the session. Some relevant results from both projects will be presented.
On May 11, 2011 at 16:47 GMT a shallow earthquake of magnitude Mw 5.1 occurred at less than 5 km northeast from the city of Lorca, in the southeast of Spain. It was preceded by a Mw 4.5 earthquake which occurred at 15:05 GMT.
Due to the proximity of the epicenter to the city and the shallowness of the source, significant accelerations (0.37g), displacement (3cm) and CAV (0.28gxs) has been recorded in Lorca accelerometric station. Directivity effects have been observed and the influence of soft soils in Lorca has been studied.
The damages in the center of Lorca were worse than it could be usually expected for such an earthquake magnitude as nine lives were lost and many buildings in the city center have been declared uninhabitable. Many non-structural masonry elements such as eaves and cornices were damaged being their fall to the street the main cause of the majority of deaths. Many URM monuments have been heavily damaged with the fall of belfries, damages to an antic castle, the destruction of a monastery, etc. Some severe damages have been observed in reinforced concrete buildings, mainly to non-structural elements.
The local and regional authorities of Murcia deployed 26 teams of experts to make an initial inspection of the damaged buildings in the center of Lorca that was completed in 48 hours. This inspection resulted in more than one thousand buildings declared as uninhabitable. Posterior inspections have declared an important number of buildings to be destroyed.
The Spanish Association of Seismic Engineering (AEIS) have coordinated a field survey in cooperation with French (AFPS) and Portuguese (SPES) Associations of Seismic Engineering, whose reports are published online: , in and, in French.
The lessons learned will be discussed in this session emphasizing the more relevant seismological aspects, damage typologies and building post-seismic inspections.
Discussion on European and non European political initiatives and legislation aimed at reducing seismic risk, beyond the most usual investments in Civil Protection, research and code development. This includes not only improving existing policies but also financial support to strengthening of old buildings and bridges, industrial facilities, lifelines and historical constructions, as well as coordination of civil protection resources, promotion of public information and insurance policy. The purpose is to present experiences in these areas and/or what are the social and political conditions to promote those policies in Europe and elsewhere.
This Special Session will contain presentations on GEM’s hazard activities, which include a vast spectrum of methods, software, tools and databases required for the calculation of seismic hazard. The aim of the session will be to discuss the results obtained by different GEM groups (e.g. Global Components projects, Regional Programmes, GEM Model Facility) and solicit feedback from the engineering and scientific communities. This session will be a singular opportunity to continue GEM's dissemination and community engagement processes (see for example GEM's community platform Nexus).
The session will include the following presentations:
The March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake has brought big tragedy to Japan in terms of approximately 20 thousand casualties due to the great earthquake, tsunami and wide area radioactively contaminated due to the Fukushima Daiichi accident, all of which have been scientifically and politically affecting all of the world. The Fukushima accident has raised variety of problems, e.g., scientific investigation on gigantic earthquake and tsunami, design criteria against unprecedented natural hazards, emergency response and recovery, possible measures of radioactive decontamination and so on. Among them, the accident has brought problems to nuclear engineering community, which should be well shared and intensively discussed by experts from all nations where there might be possible threat from future earthquakes tsunamis and/or floods, and nuclear power plants are sited.
In this respect, a Japanese special technical committee on earthquake safety of nuclear power plants, formed after the Niigata Earthquake 2007 in Japan Association of Earthquake Engineering (JAEE), has discussed, identified and compiled earthquake engineering issues on nuclear safety against future earthquakes, which are known as " a road map of technical issues in earthquake engineering". In the proposed special session of 15th WCEE, the Fukushima accident should be briefly reported on the basis of detailed investigation results for the last one year. Then identified technical issues for R&D in the form of road map will be shared and possible solutions will be discussed by academia, industry and regulators from all over the world. The lessons learned from the accident will be highlighted from the earthquake engineering viewpoint.
It is vital that the design disciplines, as well as earthquake engineering disciplines and policy-makers all understand the effects that design and planning decisions have on resilience. The objective of this session is to establish an international communication network for further discussion of these topics and sharing of knowledge:
More than twenty years of co-normative research accompanied the process of European standardisation on the design of precast structures as presently codified in the Eurocode 8 and in the numerous related product standards. During these years, an extraordinary development in precast construction took place in all European countries, including those exposed to seismic risk. The results of that long experimental and theoretical research work allowed a deep knowledge on the seismic behaviour of precast structures to be achieved, overcoming some deficiencies pointed out by recent earthquakes and directing their design towards a full reliability.
The Special Session will be animated by dedicated presentations. A final round table with SAFECAST partners and leading experts on research, practice and standardisation at international level will conclude the Session.
During the Great East Japan Earthquake, March 11, 2011, many instrumented buildings were shaken strongly for the first time. The recorded responses vary from levels of 1, 2 to higher that are considered by Japanese seismic design practice.
In the history of earthquake engineering of the world, it is also the first time that so many significant records are obtained from of a variety of buildings. The buildings are conventional buildings, response-controlled buildings, and base-isolated buildings, which vary from low-rise to super high-rise. Level of damage of such buildings varied widely. The records would enable us to understand true capability of the structures and to prepare against the stronger shake that will definitely happen in future.
The proposed chair for the session, Kazuhiko Kasai, already organized a one-day symposium in Japan on the recorded data for the Japanese research and engineering community, and the contents of all the presentations have been disseminated through the home page at Tokyo Institute of Technology (in Japanese). The purpose of the proposed special session is to transmit the significant information internationally, to the related communities world-wide.
The Special Session will include presentations on GEM’s physical exposure and vulnerability activities which include methods, software, tools and databases required for the calculation of seismic risk. The aim of the session will be to solicit feedback from regional and local experts and encourage them to test and improve the preliminary products of GEM, and get involved in the collaborative development through GEM’s community platform, Nexus.
The session will include the following presentations:
Extensive damage to a modern western city is rare. An aftershock sequence more damaging than the main shock is unusual. A geographical setting where shaking damage is exceeded by damage from ground deformation is rare. The extent of insurance penetration in New Zealand is unequalled anywhere. Christchurch combines these rare characteristics and this special session provides a forum wherein the combination of these individually rare events come together to provide a unique insight of how a modern western city responds to an ongoing sequence of earthquake attacks. Topic areas to be discussed are:
Major nuclear accidents have been rare occurrences since the beginning of the use of the atom for military and commercial use. Early in the military program fatal accidents did occur, which were confined to the workers. There have occurred innumerable small nuclear incidents worldwide with little or no public or environmental consequences. Of the top five nuclear accidents of note (Windscale Fire (1957), Brown’s Ferry Fire (1975), Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima Daiichi (2011), only the Fukushima accident was seismically triggered, but unfortunately had the most sociological consequences. This single seismically induced accident has had a major impact regarding the viability of commercial nuclear facilities for the future. The question being asked by the public and governments worldwide is: Are Nuclear Power Plants Seismically Safe? Is the problem an inadequate definition of the seismic hazard (do we know all we need to know?) or inadequate design margins given the hazard? Was Fukushima a result of design deficiencies (e.g., inundated diesel generators)?
An important corollary to these questions is: How Safe is Safe Enough? Should or can society at large avoid any industrial risk without going back to the Stone Age? Or is there something about nuclear that is more threatening than an oil spill or a chemical explosion? Obviously, nuclear regulators worldwide consider that nuclear facilities are safe enough; otherwise they must close shop and disappear into the wilderness. These and related issues will be debated at this Special Session. A panel of experts from both sides of this debate will make their case, and the audience will participate by questioning stated panel positions or bringing other perspectives to the debate.