Resilience by Design: a Structural Engineering Perspective

Abstract eng:
In response to recent earthquakes worldwide, more attention is being placed on what performance objectives are appropriate for buildings and other structures that may be subjected to severe earthquake ground shaking. Some of the underlying issues are examined in this paper, with a focus on buildings subjected to ground shaking. Issues related to ground failure or tsunami are not discussed. Based on this examination, two challenges are identified. The first of these is related to improving and extending performance-based earthquake engineering concepts to enable engineers to select structural systems and nonstructural components such that enhanced performance can be assured with confidence. This will require improved analysis methods, validated by laboratory tests and field observations, and data related to modeling of the mechanical properties and developing more robust fragilities and loss functions for structural and nonstructural elements. The second challenge is to address issues related to resilience, so that a facility might be able to be occupied and function following an earthquake. This involves not only the performance of the structure, but also its supporting infrastructure. For a structure to continue functioning a wide variety of networks and service need to be operational as well. Addressing these challenges provide a focus for the next generation of earthquake engineers.

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