The severe socio-economic impact of recent earthquake events have further highlighted, on one hand, the severe mismatch between societal expectations over the reality of seismic performance of modern buildings, while confirming, on the other hand, the crucial need for a coordinated seismic risk reduction plans at a national level.
Life Safety is not enough for modern societies; a paradigm shift in performance-based design criteria and objective towards Damage Control, or low-damage, design philosophy and technologies is urgently required.
The increased awareness by the general public/tenants, building owners, territorial authorities as well as insurers/reinsurers, of the severe economic impacts of moderate-strong earthquakes in terms of damage/dollars/downtime has indeed stimulated and facilitated the wider acceptance and implementation of cost-efficient damage-control, or low-damage, technologies.
The ‘bar’ has been raised significantly with the request to fast track the development of what the general public would refer to as the “ultimate” earthquake resisting (towards an earthquake proof?) building system, capable of sustaining the shaking of a severe earthquake basically unscathed,.
This short course will provide an overview of recent advances through extensive research, development and implementation, carried out in the past twenty years, of an integrated low-damage building system including: the skeleton of the superstructure, the non-structural components and the interaction with the soil/foundation system.
Examples of real on site-applications of such technology in New Zealand, using concrete, timber (engineered wood), steel or a combination of these materials, and featuring some of the latest innovative technical solutions developed in the laboratory will be presented as comforting example of successful transfer of performance-based seismic design approach and advanced technology from theory to practice in line with the broader objective of Building Resilience.
November 15-17-18, 2022 - 10:00am-1:00pm