The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) just released a report that concludes that the NGA-East Ground Motion Characterization Model is robust, captures epistemic uncertainty, and provides regulatory stability for siting evaluations of nuclear facilities in the central and eastern United States (CEUS).
The PEER-Bridge Research Program is announcing a Request For Proposals with the objective of developing guidelines for the efficient design of slender bridge columns.
PEER is saddened to hear of the passing of Wilfred D. (Bill) Iwan, on October 29, 2020. Bill Iwan was emeritus professor of civil engineering at Caltech, and he was 85 years old.
Professor Iwan's research and effective advocacy for seismic safety policies furthered the progress of earthquake engineering. He was engaged in efforts worldwide to discuss and promote seismic safety. He was also a pioneering proponent for monitoring strong ground motions.
PEER has just published Report No. 2020/05: "Conditional Ground-Motion Model for Peak Ground Velocity for Active Crustal Regions." It was authored by Norman A. Abrahamson, University of California, Berkeley and Sarabjot Bhasin, Duke University.
Visit the PEER publications page to download a free color pdf of the document.
Abstract
PEER has just published Report No. 2020/04: "Partially Non-Ergodic Ground-Motion Model for Subduction Regions using the NGA-Subduction Database." It was authored by Nicolas Kuehn and Yousef Bozorgnia, University of California, Los Angeles; Kenneth W. Campbell, Core Logic, Inc.; and Nicholas Gregor, Nicholas Gregor Consulting.
Visit the PEER publications page to download a free color pdf of the document.
The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) is teaming up with PEER to host the 2020 Research Forum on Residential Seismic Retrofits, which will be held online on October 26 and 27, 2020.
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, invites tenure-track faculty applications in the area of structural engineering for risk, reliability, and resilience.
Of particular interest are candidates who develop methods to examine the effects of interacting uncertainties via computational techniques at the interface between artificial intelligence/machine learning, risk and reliability analysis, decision theory, and their integration with prevailing simulation methods, such as digital-twins and finite element techniques.
PEER has just published Report No. 2020/03: "NGA-Subduction Global Ground-Motion Models with Regional Adjustment Factors." It was authored by Grace A. Parker, formerly of UCLA and now at the U.S. Geological Survey; Jonathan P. Stewart, University of California, Los Angeles; David M. Boore, Geophysicist (Emeritus, formerly of the U.S. Geological Survey) Los Altos, California; Gail M. Atkinson, Western University London, Canada; Bezhad Hassani, BC Hydro, Canada.
The impact of a PEER funded research project "A Comprehensive Database of RC Column Tests" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is John W. Wallace, Professor, UCLA, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The research team includes Saman Abdullah, Postdoctoral Researcher, UCLA.
Download the Research Project Highlight which includes the abstract (PDF)
Research Impact:
The impact of a PEER funded research project "Text Analytics on Social Media for Resilience-Enabled Extreme Events Reconnaissance (TAR)" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Laurent El Ghaoui, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley. The research team includes Selim Günay, Project Scientist, UC Berkeley, Alicia Yi-Ting Tsai, Graduate Student Researcher, UC Berkeley, Chenglong Li, Graduate Student Researcher, UC Berkeley, and Minjune Hwang, Undergraduate, UC Berkeley.
The impact of a PEER funded research project "Reduced-Order Models for Dynamic Soil-Structure Interaction Analyses of Buried Structures" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Domniki Asimaki, Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Caltech. The Co-Principal Investigator is Elnaz Esmaeilzadeh Seylabi, Assistant Professor, University of Nevada, Reno. The research team includes Kien T. Nguyen, Postdoctoral Researcher, Caltech.
The impact of a PEER funded research project "Meshfree Large-Strain Framework for Seismic Response of Ground-Structural Systems: Development and Open Source Tool" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigators (PIs) are Ahmed Elgamal, Professor, UC San Diego and Jiun-Shyan (JS) Chen, Professor, UC San Diego. The research team includes Zhijian Qiu, Graduate Student Researcher, UC San Diego.
Download the Research Project Highlight which includes the abstract. (PDF)
PEER has just published Report No. 2020/01: "Modeling Viscous Damping in Nonlinear Response History Analysis of Steel Moment-Frame Buildings: Design-Plus Ground Motions." It was authored by Xin Qian, John A. Martin and Associates; Anil K. Chopra and Frank McKenna, University of California, Berkeley.
Visit the PEER publications page to download a free color pdf of the document.
Summary
The Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) Network has issued an Event Briefing for the M6.5 Nevada (Monte Cristo Range) Earthquake that occurred on May 15, 2020. This Event Briefing is an abbreviated StEER response mechanism that briefly summarizes the event and any key lessons that can be learned
The impact of a PEER funded research project "A Pacific Rim Forum on Regional-Scale Simulations of Earthquake Ground Motions and Infrastructure Response for PBEE of Transportation Systems" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is David McCallen, University of Nevada, Reno. The research team includes Norman Abrahamson, University of California, Berkeley, and Floriana Petrone, University of Nevada, Reno.
The impact of a PEER funded research project "Probabilistic Simulation-Based Evaluation of the Effect of Near-Field Spatially Varying Ground Motions on Distributed Infrastructure Systems" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Floriana Petrone, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Nevada Reno. The research team includes Norman Abrahamson, Adjunct Professor, UC Berkeley, and David McCallen, Professor, University of Nevada Reno.
The 