Rapid Seismic Risk Evaluation System of Existing Bridges in Taiwan

Abstract eng:
Located at the western Circum Pacific Seismic Belt, Taiwan suffers from earthquakes frequently caused by the interactive extruding at the interface between the Philippine Ocean Plate and the Euro-Pacific Plate. Numerous existing bridges in Taiwan are inevitably threatened by the occurrence of strong earthquakes. Therefore, the establishment of a rapid seismic risk evaluation system could help in reducing seismic disaster of the bridges. Based on the recorded earthquakes with magnitude over 5.0 during 1990 to 2003, this paper performed the regression analyses of attenuation law of peak ground acceleration (PGA) for the stations, all over Taiwan, set up by the CWB under the Taiwan Strong Motion Instrumentation Program. The comparisons between simulated seismic intensity and actual one for some recent earthquakes were made sequentially to assure the precision of analysis. As a result, the distribution of PGA, for any simulated earthquake, over Taiwan can be predicted successfully and served as the basis of seismic demand evaluation. On the other hand, according to the investigations of seismic capacity for over 2,000 existing bridges performed by the Taiwan Directorate General of Highways, the fragility curves of the bridges can be implemented and employed in calculating the probabilities for various damage levels. Accordingly, this paper adopted the object-oriented technique to develop the evaluation system. The possible seismic loss of the bridges under a specific simulating earthquake could be evaluated in a short moment and shown visually. The developed system might facilitate the careful strategy of disaster-preventing.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket