PEER Leads Tall Buildings Initiative

Several west coast cities are seeing an upsurge in the construction of high-rise buildings. This tall buildings boom has created a demand for performance-based approaches that will enable construction using new framing systems rising to heights outside the range of building code prescriptive provisions. The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) is responding to this need by leading an initiative to develop design criteria that will ensure safe and usable tall buildings following future earthquakes.

Collectively known as the Tall Buildings Initiative, this project involves the Applied Technology Council, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, Los Angeles Tall Buildings Structural Design Council, San Francisco Department of Building Inspection, Southern California Earthquake Center, Structural Engineers Association of California, U.S. Geological Survey, PEER, and several practicing professionals.

The initiative is funding a range of short to intermediate-term projects spanning 24 months in 2007-2008. Specific tasks for this initiative are:

• Task 1 – Establish the Tall Buildings Project Advisory Committee
• Task 2 – Develop consensus on performance objectives
• Task 3 – Baseline assessment of dynamic response characteristics of tall buildings
• Task 4 – Synthetically generated ground motions
• Task 5 – Review and validation of synthetically generated ground motions
• Task 6 - Guidelines on selection and modification of ground motions
• Task 7 - Guidelines on modeling and acceptance values
• Task 8 – Input ground motions for tall buildings with subterranean levels
• Task 9 – Presentations at conferences, workshops, seminars
• Task 10 - Performance-Based Seismic Design Guidelines for Tall Buildings

Several future tasks will synthesize results of prior tasks to develop a framework for seismic design of tall buildings, summarized in a final guidelines document containing principles and specific criteria for tall building seismic design. The document is intended to support ongoing guidelines and code-writing activities of collaborating organizations, as well as being a stand-alone reference for designers of high-rise buildings.

The initiative is guided by a Project Advisory Committee comprising:

Norm Abrahamson, Yousef Bozorgnia, Ron Hamburger, Helmut Krawinkler, Marshall Lew, Ray Lui, Jack Moehle, Mark Moore, Farzad Naeim, and Paul Somerville.

Broader community engagement will be achieved through a series of regular workshops and other outreach activities.