Light-frame low-rise wood dwellings have typically had adequate levels of safety in terms of collapse prevention. Nevertheless, damage to this type of construction due to earthquakes has resulted in large economic losses and thousands of displaced families. This paper evaluates the benefits, on a regional scale, of using a recently developed design and construction method referred to as unibody. This cost-effective method increases the lateral strength and, particularly, the lateral stiffness of walls of wood-frame houses, leading to significant reductions in lateral displacement demands. For houses at a given distance from the seismic source, reduced displacement demands translate into much smaller probabilities of damage. Consequently, for a region affected by a seismic event, this translates into a much smaller area of damaged houses. It is found that, for short-period structures, increasing the lateral stiffness is more efficient than increasing the lateral strength. Thus, when using unibody construction, which greatly increases the lateral stiffness of wood-frame houses, the number of damaged residential units is greatly reduced. It is shown that these relationships are strongly nonlinear and are positively combined resulting in a substantial reduction of seismic risk on a regional scale.

中文翻译：

---

在区域范围内评估改善低层住宅建筑抗震性能的新策略的收益评估

就防止倒塌而言，轻型低层木结构住宅通常具有足够的安全性。然而，由于地震对这种类型的建筑造成的损害导致了巨大的经济损失和成千上万的流离失所家庭。本文在区域范围内评估使用最近开发的称为一体式设计和建造方法的收益。这种具有成本效益的方法提高了木结构房屋墙体的侧向强度，特别是墙体的侧向刚度，从而大大减少了侧向位移的需求。对于距地震源给定距离的房屋，减少的位移需求转化为更小的损坏概率。因此，对于受地震影响的区域，这意味着受损房屋的面积要小得多。发现对于短周期结构，增加横向刚度比增加横向强度更有效。因此，当使用一体式结构时，大大增加了木结构房屋的侧向刚度，损坏的住宅单元的数量大大减少。结果表明，这些关系是强烈的非线性关系，并且正相关，从而在区域范围内大大降低了地震风险。