Long bridges and other lifeline systems are particularly susceptible to the spatial variability of earthquake actions. Even though it is a matter that has been substantially studied in the past decades, there are still plenty of issues with the engineering application of earthquake spatial variability. One of the difficulties is generating displacement time-histories with zero initial and small residual

The CEB/FIP 1985 seismic model code, the 1994 ENV and the 2004 EN versions of Eurocode 8, as well as the 2019 draft of the future Eurocode 8, have adopted different models for the shear strength of RC joints, without paying much attention neither to the shear design rules applying at the time to RC structures designed to non-seismic actions, nor to the large volume of available test results. In the

This paper proposes an innovative externally-hung self-centering rocking wall (ESRW) structural system for retrofitting existing reinforced concrete structures. Reinforced corbels are installed on the columns of an existing structure to which rocking walls having unbonded post-tensioned tendons are connected using H-shaped connectors. The seismic performance and self-centering ability of the ESRW were

The last National Risk Assessment NRA for Italy was developed at the end of 2018 by the Department of Civil Protection (DPC) in response to the specific requirement of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 to periodically adjourn the assessment of disaster risk. The methodology adopted to perform seismic risk assessment and build national seismic risk maps was specifically developed

The eccentric bracing system equipped with vertical links is capable of providing high levels of stiffness, strength and ductility, and therefore, can be efficiently used for seismic retrofit of existing structures. This study aims to investigate the seismic reliability of steel moment-resisting frames retrofitted by this system using a novel combined series–parallel system approach. The seismic response

Fragility functions are fundamental for the assessment of seismic safety of structures or the loss assessment of a portfolio of assets. The present paper describes a procedure to derive fragility functions representative of Portuguese reinforced concrete precast buildings. This goal was achieved following an analytical methodology considering the result of hundreds of nonlinear static analyses, whose

The impacts of Iran’s recent and destructive earthquake of Mw 7.3 November 12 2017, and its important subsequent events are investigated at Sarpol-e-zahab by means of 1D-equivalent linear site response analyses. Local damages at Sarpol-e-zahab highlighted the role of seismic microzonation in seismic risk reduction and damage prevention plans for future events. Hence, the main goals of this study are

Controlled rocking concentrically steel braced frame (CR-CSBF) is an earthquake-resisting system that is effectively capable of reducing structural damage after earthquakes and causes resilience in the structure. Post-tensioning (PT) strands and fuse members are two important elements in CR-CBSFs to provide frame self-centering and energy dissipation, respectively. This study firstly purposes to evaluate

On 21/7/2017 a M6.6 offshore earthquake shook the Greek island of Kos and the Turkish coastal city of Bodrum. The Gazi Hasan Pasha mosque, a 1786 structure, suffered very limited damage: the load-bearing walls have not shown cracks or extensive deformation; the minaret and few timber members at the roof and the floor suffered serious damage. Confirmation of the damage by the results of an analysis

In this paper, empirical fragility curves for reinforced concrete buildings are derived, based on post-earthquake damage data collected in the aftermath of earthquakes occurred in Italy in the period 1976–2012. These data, made available through an online platform called Da.D.O., provide information on building position, building characteristics and damage detected on different structural components

The 2016 Kumamoto earthquake (main-shock: Mw 7.0, April 16th) has induced a widespread disruption of lifeline systems across the affected area. In Uki City (Kumamoto prefecture, Japan), water supply had been intermittently cut off for several days: as a result, around 50 repair operations on various locations of the underground pipeline system have been carried out by municipal services. In order to

The simulation of broad-band (0.1 to 10 + Hz) ground-shaking over deep and spatially extended sedimentary basins at regional scales is challenging. We evaluate the ground-shaking of a potential M 6.5 earthquake in the southern Lower Rhine Embayment, one of the most important areas of earthquake recurrence north of the Alps, close to the city of Cologne in Germany. In a first step, information from

Despite significant research advances on the seismic response analysis, there is still an urgent need for validation of numerical simulation methods for prediction of earthquake response and damage. In this respect, seismic monitoring networks and proper modelling can further support validation studies, allowing more realistic simulations of what earthquakes can produce. This paper discusses the seismic

The seismic response of a medieval church in Central Italy is analyzed considering the two roof configurations, i.e., reinforced concrete and timber roofs, that the church had in different periods of its existence. Structural interventions and changes are common in the churches of this territory, where frequent earthquakes put these buildings at risk. The church studied here, St. Salvatore in Acquapagana

Schools represent a reference point for communities in any part of the world. Therefore, their safety and resilience against natural catastrophes is of paramount importance. The recent 2015 Gorkha earthquake has unfortunately shown that Nepalese school buildings are highly vulnerable to seismic actions. Most of them are indeed constituted by low-quality unreinforced masonry (URM). The quantification

This paper aims to analyse the ductility of existing buildings to evaluate its influence in their seismic performance. This has been achieved through the retrospective analysis of an existing building in accordance with current seismic codes. This study has revealed the lack of guidance in the NCSE02 and the EC8 regarding the assessment of the ductility of existing buildings. This manuscript proposes

The seismic behaviour of a building on a liquefiable deposit is a complex interaction which involves quantifying both shaking induced damage and permanent ground deformation-related damage. In this paper the key parameters that influence both surface shaking and foundation settlements have been identified as the depth, thickness and liquefaction resistance of an equivalent liquefiable layer. These

An insufficient separation distance between adjacent buildings is the main reason for structural pounding during severe earthquakes. The lateral load resistance system, fundamental natural period, mass, and stiffness are important factors having the influence on collisions between two adjacent structures. In this study, 3-, 5- and 9-story adjacent reinforced concrete and steel moment resisting frames

Probabilistic seismic risk is affected by several sources of uncertainty. Investigating their influence on loss analysis results is essential to obtain reliable quantitative estimations of seismic performance. Within the framework developed by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center for probabilistic seismic loss analysis, this study incorporates the effect of seismic demand model

Over the past decade, several long duration subduction earthquakes took place in different locations around the world such as Indonesia in 2004, China in 2008, Chile in 2010, and Japan in 2011. Long-duration and large-magnitude earthquakes are also possible to occur in the Cascadia subduction zone along the Pacific Northwest Coast of the United States. In this paper, numerical investigation was conducted

Unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings with cavity walls, typically constituted by the assembly of a loadbearing inner leaf weakly coupled to an outer veneer with no structural functions, are widely present in a number of regions exposed to tectonic or induced seismicity, including the Groningen province (The Netherlands), which has lately experienced low-intensity ground shaking due to natural gas extraction

This paper’s objective is to obtain exact analytical parameters for Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) that derive their efficiency for controlling the seismic response by inducing two modes with equal damping ratios, when affixed to single-degree-of-freedom mechanical systems. The parameters that are derived are intrinsic to the systems and are independent of the ground motion. It is seen that for TMDs tuned

The Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation approach has been widely applied to the problem of probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) for geographically distributed systems. Although the conventional integral approach is well-established in PSHA, the MC simulation approach is an efficient and flexible alternative when complicated factors, such as spatial correlation of ground shaking are involved. The

This erratum is published as to include the missing OA funding note inorder to fulfil contractual requirement of the Compact agreement.

Structures in earthquake-prone areas are not subjected to a single seismic event, but also to a seismic sequence consisting of mainshock and several aftershocks. However, the influence of seismic sequence on performance of structures has not been addressed in majority of existing seismic codes. This paper investigates the effect of repeated earthquakes on performance of steel buckling restrained braced

The existing reinforced concrete buildings typical of the Mediterranean area commonly have poor seismic performance and high vulnerability to the seismic events. As demonstrated by recent post-earthquake reconstruction processes, they commonly exhibited significant damage to structural components and to infills and partitions resulting in very high repair costs. This suggests that effective seismic

A significant correlation between the in-plane (IP) and out-of-plane (OOP) damage propagation of masonry infills (MIs) is frequently observed after strong earthquakes, posing a serious problem as regards vulnerability of public buildings such as schools. The present work is aimed at identifying the effects of different IP and OOP modelling assumptions of MIs on their seismic damage. To this end, the

Rebar slippage in reinforced concrete (RC) elements results in concrete expansion, large cracks, and consequently, early deterioration of strength as well as premature stiffness degradation, particularly in the inelastic energy dissipating zones. Although design standards prescribe different minimum concrete compressive strength, seismic evaluation and retrofit standards, and guidelines permit the

Tuned mass dampers (TMDs) and nonlinear energy sinks (NESs) are two viable options for passively absorbing structural vibrations. In seismic applications, a trade-off exists in their performance, because TMDs’ effectiveness varies with the structural stiffness while NESs’ effectiveness varies with the earthquake intensity. To investigate this trade-off systematically, a lifecycle cost- (LCC-) oriented

Modelling earthquake-induced soil liquefaction and assessing its consequences to overlying buildings are still delicate and challenging tasks in geotechnical earthquake engineering. Having been carried out within the European H2020 LIQUEFACT project, this paper focuses on the application of both physical and numerical modelling techniques. We present the complete passage starting from the preparation

Free-field conditions on the ground surface are widely used to assess the local seismic response. Nevertheless, this assumption is a very strong approximation in urban areas since the dynamic interaction between the urban agglomerate and the soil cannot be neglected. Several studies evidenced the transmission of vibrations from the buildings to the soil and the multiple interactions between a building

In the framework of the emergency management in the case of seismic events, the evaluation of the expected damage represents a basic requirement for risk informed planning. Seismic risk is defined by the probability to reach a level of damage on given exposed elements caused by seismic events occurring in a fixed period and in a fixed area. To this purpose, the expected seismic input, the exposed elements

Performance-based seismic engineering is nowadays adopted for economical design of structures to resist earthquakes and it requires nonlinear static pushover analysis to be performed. In this approach, the energy dissipation due to nonlinear behavior of the structures is taken into account by obtaining the equivalent viscous damping and this damping is evaluated from the global pushover curve of the

It was experimentally validated that partially debonded high-strength longitudinal reinforcement can provide strong self-centering capacity to minimize residual deformation, and greatly mitigate seismic damage of column. To continuously investigate the influence of partially debonded longitudinal rebars (PDLR) of column and beam on seismic behaviors of beam-column joint assembly, three interior and

Papua New Guinea (PNG) lies in a belt of intense tectonic activity that experiences high levels of seismicity. Although this seismicity poses significant risks to society, the Building Code of PNG and its underpinning seismic loading requirements have not been revised since 1982. This study aims to partially address this gap by updating the seismic zoning map on which the earthquake loading component

This paper aims to investigate the seismic vulnerability of an existing unanchored steel storage tank ideally installed in a refinery in Sicily (Italy), along the lines of performance-based earthquake engineering. Tank performance is estimated by means of component-level fragility curves for specific limit states. The assessment is based on a framework that relies on a three-dimensional finite element

The interaction between cladding panels and the main structure is a crucial point to assess the seismic response, and above all the structural safety, of RC precast industrial building. In the past, connections were often designed to allow construction tolerances and to accommodate both thermal and wind-induced displacements. The lack of specific details to allow relative in-plane displacements between

With the increased number of multi-storey buildings in seismic areas, research efforts have been focused on developing earthquake resilient systems, such as low-damage techniques based on the combination of post-tensioning and dissipating devices. This paper describes the experimental study performed on a 3-storey post-tensioned timber framed (Pres-Lam) building equipped with energy dissipating systems

In engineering practice, the liquefaction potential of a sandy soil is usually evaluated with a semi-empirical, stress-based approach computing a factor of safety in free field conditions, defined as the ratio between the liquefaction resistance (capacity) and the seismic demand. By so doing, an estimate of liquefaction potential is obtained, but nothing is known on the pore pressure increments (often

A limited gap between closely spaced structural parts may induce internal pounding in seismically isolated structures, because of notable displacement at the level of the isolation system under severe earthquakes. A gap between a fixed-base elevator shaft and the surrounding building is presented here with reference to a reinforced concrete building located in the Sicilian town of Augusta. The building

The present paper shows the results of an experimental test campaign on RC base column joints realized using three different typologies of steel reinforcing bars. Traditional TempCore®B450C rebars were adopted in comparison with enhanced ones with Dual-Phase microstructure. The interest in the use of such kind of reinforcing grade comes from its improved performance in terms of durability in presence

Seismic assessment of mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings is important for urban seismic risk reduction. Nonlinear time history analysis is the state-of-the-art analysis tool for this purpose. However, the number of such buildings may reach to several tens of thousands in metropolitan cities of earthquake prone countries. This necessitates faster yet sufficiently accurate assessment methods to mitigate

Lap splices and bar cutoffs introduce reinforcement discontinuities in reinforced concrete structures. A two-step approach was used to investigate the effect of longitudinal reinforcement discontinuities on the seismic performance of reinforced concrete structural walls. In the first step, six cyclic tests on small-scale reinforced concrete structural walls were conducted to study the effect of bar

The new steel–concrete composite rigid-frame bridge (SCCRFB) with concrete-filled double skin steel tube (CFDST) piers has been verified showing superior seismic performance, and a promising structural solution for bridge constructions near or above active faults. Previous experimental and numerical studies revealed that the damages of this bridge type under across-fault ground motions mainly concentrate

This paper illustrates an original and simple method to predict earthquake-induced deformations of geotechnical systems. The method is an extension of static non-linear analysis, and is conceived to predict the behaviour of geotechnical systems, like supported and unsupported excavations, that during the seismic motion accumulate displacements in a single direction. The seismic capacity of the system

A high percentage of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Portugal were designed and built before the introduction of modern seismic codes. This research aims to assess the seismic capacity and vulnerability of RC buildings in the city of Lisbon. For that purpose, nonlinear static procedures have been used and fragility curves have been developed. These buildings are reaching the end of their nominal

The damage on supply and drainage water networks is a serious cause of economic disruption for urban systems affected by earthquakes. Among various concerns, the ruptures of sewer pipes and manholes generated by liquefaction determine a particularly severe sanitary hazard and require extensive, costly and time-consuming repairs. Quantitative risk assessment carried out with the characterisation and

Recent earthquakes have exposed the vulnerability of existing buildings; this is demonstrated by damage incurred after moderate-to-high magnitude earthquakes. This stresses the need to exploit available data from different sources to develop reliable seismic risk components. As far as it regards empirical fragility assessment, accurate estimation of ground-shaking at the location of buildings of interest

Capacity design, according to the modern seismic building codes, requires the application of specific rules and construction details in order to prevent brittle failure modes at material, element and structural level. In particular, with reference to single-story precast reinforced concrete structures with columns joined by pinned beams, the Italian seismic building code, following the Eurocode 8 general

Earthquake-induced pulse-like ground motions are often observed in near-source conditions due to forward-directivity. Recent worldwide earthquakes have emphasised the severe damage potential of such pulse-like ground motions. This paper introduces a framework to quantify the impact of directivity-induced pulse-like ground motions on the direct economic losses of building portfolios. To this aim, a

This article deals with the application of an analytical methodology for the large-scale vulnerability assessment of reinforced concrete frame buildings in Italy. This methodology is known in the technical literature with the acronym SP-BELA (Simplified Pushover-Based Earthquake Loss Assessment) and has been adopted by the Eucentre research group to contribute to the production of the seismic risk

Microzonation for earthquake-induced liquefaction hazard is the subdivision of a territory at a municipal or submunicipal scale in areas characterized by the same probability of liquefaction manifestation for the occurrence of an earthquake of specified intensity. The liquefaction hazard at a site depends on the severity of expected ground shaking as well as on the susceptibility to liquefaction of

The reliable estimation of seismic losses due to damage to buildings is paramount for the post-emergency management and the planning of recovery activities. For residential reinforced concrete (RC) infilled buildings, a significant role in the computation of seismic loss is played by non-structural components, above all infills, partitions and services, as shown in past earthquakes. In this work, a

Intensity measure (IM) selection is a crucial step in regional seismic risk assessment (RSRA) of spatially distributed structural portfolios. In order to facilitate more confident regional seismic risk estimates, this study proposes an entropy-based IM selection methodology, offering the first systematic and quantitative regional-level IM selection approach. By conceptualizing the spatially distributed

Risk assessment plays an important role in quantifying earthquake loss and has been widely used in the field of seismic engineering. However, current studies of the risk assessment rarely consider the different failure modes of piers (i.e., flexure failure, flexure-shear failure and shear failure), which will lead to an excessive estimation for the seismic performance and collapse safety of the reinforced

Seismic risk assessment at the territorial level is now widely recognised as essential for countries with intense seismic activity, such as Italy. Academia is called to give its contribution in order to synergically deepen the knowledge about the various components of this risk, starting from the complex evaluation of vulnerability of the built heritage. In line with this, a mechanics-based seismic

We present a Bayesian model for the estimation of ground-motion models that allows one to account for truncated data. Truncated data occurs in ground-motion model development because instruments do not record continuously, but only when triggered. The model is formulated as a multi-level model and incorporates event and station terms. The model considers truncation on one variable [e.g., peak ground

Concrete block infill walls, due to their high strength and stiffness, can significantly influence the seismic behavior of the frames. The infill walls can increase the overall lateral frame strength and can also induce local failures in the surrounding frames. In general, if local failure can be avoided, the presence of the infill walls can provide additional reserved strength that can be beneficial

Regions of low seismicity present a particular challenge for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis when identifying suitable ground motion models (GMMs) and quantifying their epistemic uncertainty. The 2020 European Seismic Hazard Model adopts a scaled backbone approach to characterise this uncertainty for shallow seismicity in Europe, incorporating region-to-region source and attenuation variability

The 2008 Mw7.9 Wenchuan earthquake in China caused widespread soil liquefaction and ground failures. A liquefaction case study of gently sloping ground at Yingxiu Town in the near-fault region is presented, which features its relatively thick deposits of sand-gravel mixtures, high soil stiffness, extremely intensive ground motion, large lateral spreading and severe damage of superstructure. The details