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Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 September 2023) | Viewed by 14610

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Fatemeh Jalayer

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Guest Editor

Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
Interests: probabilistic methods in civil engineering; structural reliability; safety-checking of structures; performance-based earthquake engineering; time-dependent seismic hazard and risk assessment; life-cycle cost assessment; seismic ground motion representation and intensity measures; progressive structural collapse; impact of rainfall-induced hydrogeological phenomena on the built environment

Dr. Hossein Ebrahimian

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
Interests: time-dependent seismic hazard and risk assessment; structural reliability; probabilistic methods in civil engineering; performance-based earthquake engineering; ground-motion intensity measure; safety-checking of structures

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, titled “Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation.”

Almost a couple of decades have passed since the seismic design and retrofit paradigm undertook a major shift from prescriptive procedures to quantified “performance-based” objectives. To this effect, modern performance-based seismic design and retrofit strives to satisfy quantified performance objectives. The design and retrofit process, in this context, is nothing but an optimization problem, in which the expected utility/loss of the structure needs to be maximized/minimized. The quantified performance objectives adopted in the codes, which play as constraints to this optimization problem, are usually articulated in terms of safety and functionality criteria. The social dimension of such criteria is evident. The utility function is almost ubiquitously expressed in terms of the expected life-cycle cost. Although the life-cycle cost is measured in economic terms, it encompasses sustainability-related notions such as (residual) lifetime duration and the indirect costs related to downtime. Evaluation of the life span duration for an infrastructure in a seismically active zone is not a trivial task. It involves tracing the structural performance profile in time considering potential major treats (e.g., strong earthquakes, aftershocks, and other), slowly deteriorating phenomena such as ageing, the undesirable effect of drivers such as climate change, given prescribed repair and maintenance pathways. Along the same lines, the evaluation of the costs associated to downtime also involves consideration of the complex socio-economic consequences of functionality interruption due to physical damage. To this end, seismic design and retrofit schemes and repair/maintenance pathways satisfying objectives such as maximizing the (residual) lifetime and minimizing downtime of an infrastructure can be perceived as sustainability-enhancing measures. The sustainability principles can be considered even more explicitly by quantifying utility as a function of both socioeconomic and environmental “costs” associated to design, retrofit, and repair/maintenance planning decisions.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions towards filling the complex mosaic of sustainable design and retrofit decision-making and repair/maintenance planning for infrastructure in seismically active regions:

Performance-based seismic design and retrofit
Estimation of down-time and residual lifetime
Multi-risk analysis methods
Time-dependent seismic risk assessment for deteriorating systems (considering aftershocks, and/or ageing)
Retrofit, repair/maintenance decision-making based on sustainable criteria

Prof. Fatemeh Jalayer
Dr. Hossein Ebrahimian
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

sustainable decision-making
life cycle cost assessment
performance-based design
earthquake engineering
seismic retrofit decision-making
time-dependent seismic risk assessment
multi-risk analysis
residual lifetime
downtime
uncertainty quantification

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 5818 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reliability Estimation of the Compressive Concrete Strength Based on Non-Destructive Tests

by Andrea Miano, Hossein Ebrahimian, Fatemeh Jalayer and Andrea Prota

Sustainability 2023, 15(19), 14644; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su151914644 - 09 Oct 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 889

Abstract

The uncertainty in the concrete compressive strength is one of the most challenging issues in safety checking of existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. The concrete compressive strength used in the assessment can highly influence the vulnerability results and thus the retrofit strategies. The need to use less expensive and less invasive in situ measurements such as the non-destructive tests should be balanced with a careful check of their structural reliability. The compressive concrete strength is characterized herein based on a large database of both in situ destructive and non-destructive results measured on the same structural members. The data are obtained from existing RC buildings mainly located in the Campania region, Southern Italy. Probabilistic linear and multilinear regression models are developed for calculating the compressive concrete strength based on non-destructive tests. Furthermore, the implementation of the concrete strength based on ultrasonic test results are investigated together with the relative measurement error through a fully probabilistic workflow. Accordingly, the relative weights of non-destructive data for calculating concrete compressive strength are estimated and compared with those recommended by the Italian national code. The results demonstrate that the effective weights of the non-destructive data are very close to the code-based recommendation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation)

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19 pages, 2644 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of Seismic Performance of Masonry Stone Pagoda: Dynamic Centrifuge Test and Numerical Simulation Analysis

by Gayoon Lee, Heon-Joon Park, Khoa V. A. Pham, Jae-Young Kim, Sung-Min Lee and Kihak Lee

Sustainability 2023, 15(17), 13098; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su151713098 - 30 Aug 2023

Viewed by 846

Abstract

This study provides a comparison of results from dynamic centrifuge tests and a finite element analysis model to confirm the behavior of a representative Korean stone pagoda cultural heritage structure against earthquakes. The indirect stiffness or physical state of the structure was estimated by measuring the natural frequency of the masonry stone pagoda. The actual natural frequency of the stone pagoda was measured to be 4.5 Hz. It was determined to have a lower natural frequency than other stone pagodas of similar size. For the experiment, a dynamic centrifugal separator test was performed on a 1/15 model. Data from an actual earthquake record, the Ofunato earthquake, were used, with various maximum acceleration levels ranging from 0.069 g to 0.424 g. In order to confirm the accuracy of the finite element analysis model, the measured natural frequency of the masonry stone pagoda was compared with the modal analysis of the finite element model. When the data obtained from the experiment and the PGA (peak ground acceleration) of the FEM analysis with a complex masonry stone pagoda using a validated model result were compared, it was found to have a low average error rate of 13%. This shows that structural behavior can be predicted for similar masonry stone pagoda structures using finite element method analysis in the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation)

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27 pages, 3751 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Influence of a Soft Story on the Seismic Response of Non-Structural Components

by Vyshnavi Pesaralanka, S. P. Challagulla, Felipe Vicencio, P. Suresh Chandra Babu, Ismail Hossain, Mohammed Jameel and Uppari Ramakrishna

Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 2860; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su15042860 - 04 Feb 2023

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1880

Abstract

Multi-story, reinforced-concrete (RC) building structures with soft stories are highly vulnerable to damage due to earthquake loads. The soft story causes a significant stiffness irregularity, which has led to numerous buildings collapsing in previous seismic events. In addition to the structural collapse, the failure of non-structural components (NSCs) has also been observed during past earthquakes. In light of this, this study investigates the effect of a soft story and its location on the seismic behavior of a supporting building and NSCs. The soft story is assumed to be located on the bottom (ground), middle, and top-story levels of the considered building models. Story displacements and inter-story drift ratios are evaluated to assess structural behavior. The floor response spectra and the amplification effects of NSC on the floor acceleration responses are studied to understand the behavior of NSCs. The analysis results revealed that the bottom soft story exhibits a considerable vertical stiffness irregularity, and its position substantially affects the floor response spectra. The amplification in the floor acceleration response was found to be greater at the soft-story level. This study reported that middle soft-story buildings exhibit the most remarkable amplification in the component’s acceleration. Finally, peak floor response demands are compared with the code-based formulation, and it is found that the code-based formulation’s linear assumption may lead peak floor response demands to be underestimated or overestimated. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation)

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18 pages, 3081 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Calibration of Load and Resistance Factors for Breakwater Foundations under the Earthquake Loading

by Nhu Son Doan, Jungwon Huh, Van Ha Mac, Dong Hyawn Kim and Kiseok Kwak

Sustainability 2021, 13(4), 1730; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13041730 - 05 Feb 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2302

Abstract

This study investigates the system stability of breakwater foundations subjected to earthquakes from a probabilistic point of view. A fully probabilistic approach, i.e., a combination of the Monte Carlo simulation and Bishop’s simplified method, has been developed to evaluate the system failure probability of foundation damage, one of the prevailing failures encountered during earthquakes. Twelve sections of perforated caisson breakwaters located around Korea were chosen as case studies. First, the reliability analysis was performed for all the breakwaters at existing conditions; then, the calibration process involving the estimation of load and resistance factors was conducted for 12 breakwaters at three levels of the target reliability index. As the performance function, used in the stability analysis of breakwater foundations, is defined based on an implicit shape with a high-dimensional space of variables, the calibration process of load and resistance factors becomes cumbersome and complicated. Therefore, this study has proposed a sensitivity analysis to be implemented prior to the calibration process to elicit the effects of variables on the stability of each breakwater, which, thereafter, effectively directs the calibration process. The results of this study indicate that the failures in the foundation of breakwaters frequently occur in different modes. Therefore, the failure probability should be estimated considering all possible failure modes of the foundation. The sensitivity results elucidate that the soil strength parameters are the dominant variables, contributing to the stability of foundations, whereas the seismic coefficient presents the negative effect, causing the insecurity of breakwaters. In particular, the deadweights, though directly contributing to the seismic forces, show a small effect on the stability of foundations. The calibration shows that the load factors slightly vary with an increase in the target reliability index and set 1.10 for three safety levels. In contrast, the resistance factor exhibits an inverse relationship with the specified reliability index. Especially when the load factor equals 1.10, the resistance factors are 0.90, 0.85, and 0.80, corresponding to the reliability index of 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0, respectively. Eventually, it is proved that the sensitivity analysis prior to the calibration process makes the procedure more efficient. Accordingly, the iteration of simulation execution is diminished, and the convergence is quickly accomplished. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation)

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34 pages, 38782 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Fault-Source-Based Probabilistic Seismic Hazard and Risk Analysis for Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: A Case of the Leech River Valley Fault and Devil’s Mountain Fault System

by Katsuichiro Goda and Andrei Sharipov

Sustainability 2021, 13(3), 1440; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13031440 - 29 Jan 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2240

Abstract

This study develops a fault-source-based seismic hazard model for the Leech River Valley Fault (LRVF) and the Devil’s Mountain Fault (DMF) in southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. These faults pose significant risks to the provincial capital, Victoria, due to their proximity and potentially large earthquake magnitudes. To evaluate the effects of including these faults in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis and city-wide seismic loss estimation for Victoria, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis is conducted by considering different fault rupture patterns and different earthquake magnitude models, as well as variations in their parameters. The aim is to assess the relative contributions of the LRVF-DMF system to the overall seismic hazard and risk in Victoria at different return periods. The consideration of the LRVF-DMF system as a potential seismic source increases the seismic risk assessment results by 10 to 30%, especially at the high return period levels. The sensitivity analysis results highlight the importance of determining the slip rate for the fault deformation zone and of specifying the earthquake magnitude models (e.g., characteristic versus truncated exponential models). From urban seismic risk management perspectives, these nearby faults should be considered critical earthquake scenarios. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation)

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17 pages, 1185 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fragility Analysis of RC Frame Structures Subjected to Obliquely Incident Seismic Waves

by Bo Huang, Jiachen Guo, Kailong Liao and Yu Zhao

Sustainability 2021, 13(3), 1108; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13031108 - 21 Jan 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1635

Abstract

Obliquely incident seismic waves have been habitually overlooked in fragility analysis. In this paper, a new approach to solving the equivalent loads on the infinite element boundary due to obliquely incident seismic waves is proposed. Based on the site conditions and structural characteristics in the Jiaxing area, the seismic response of a multi-story reinforced concrete (RC) frame structure has been fully investigated through the finite element method. Under obliquely incident SV waves (shear wave in the vertical x-z plane), the distribution of internal forces on the structure in the case of homogeneous foundation soil is significantly asymmetrical. Among the 3 obliquely incident angles investigated in this paper, the maximum inter-story displacement is smallest when the incident angle is 20° and largest when the angle equals 30°. For the structural fragility, the exceedance probability at each structural damage level is smallest when the incident reflection angle is 20° and largest when the angle equals 30°. When the structure is located in the silty valley, the influence of oblique incidence is attenuated and there is no obvious stress asymmetry on the structure due to the refraction of seismic waves on the interface. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation)

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18 pages, 6305 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Vibration-Based Seismic Damage States Evaluation for Regional Concrete Beam Bridges Using Random Forest Method

by Xiaoming Lei, Limin Sun, Ye Xia and Tiantao He

Sustainability 2020, 12(12), 5106; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su12125106 - 23 Jun 2020

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 3453

Abstract

Transportation networks play an important role in urban areas, and bridges are the most vulnerable structures to earthquakes. The seismic damage evaluation of bridges provides an effective tool to assess the potential damage, and guides the post-earthquake recovery operations. With the help of structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques, the structural condition could be accurately evaluated through continuous monitoring of structural responses, and evaluating vibration-based features, which could reflect the deterioration of materials and boundary conditions, and are extensively used to reflect the structural conditions. This study proposes a vibration-based seismic damage state evaluation method for regional bridges. The proposed method contains the measured structural dynamic parameters and bridge configuration parameters. In addition, several intensity measures are also included in the model, to represent the different characteristics and the regional diversity of ground motions. The prediction models are trained with a random forest algorithm, and their confusion matrices and receiver operation curves reveal a good prediction performance, with over 90% accuracy. The significant parameter identification of bridge systems and components reveals the critical parameters for seismic design, disaster prevention and structure retrofit. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Assessment and Modelling in Seismic Risk Mitigation)

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