Recent Advances in Earthquake Loss Estimation in Buildings

Abstract

Recent advances in building-specific loss estimation will be presented. Current building-specific loss estimation methodologies typically estimate economic losses based only on peak response quantities such as peak inter-story drift ratios or peak floor accelerations. A new approach to incorporate residual inter-story drifts is presented. The new approach explicitly accounts for the probability of having to demolish a building as a function of residual inter-story drifts. The proposed approach is illustrated by estimating direct economic seismic losses in four reinforced concrete moment resisting frame buildings in Los Angeles, California. Two buildings have nonductile detailing representative of pre-70's building codes while the other two buildings have ductile requirements satisfying current seismic building codes in the U.S. Results from this study indicate that economic losses at intermediate levels of ground motion intensity are often dominated by losses due to residual inter-story drifts. This is particularly true in the case of ductile buildings which have a larger deformation capacity and therefore smaller probability of collapse at during intense ground motions, but have a considerable probability of experiencing residual displacement. It is concluded that neglecting losses from residual drifts can lead to significant underestimation of economic losses.

Date

Wednesday, June 20^th, 2012

Time

12:00 PM EST

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Sponsors

Seminar sponsored by:

• Student Chapter of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute at the University at Buffalo (UB-EERI)
• CSEE-Graduate Student Association
• MCEER
• NEES@Buffalo
• the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering (CSEE) at the University at Buffalo

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