PEER Reports

The estimation of repair costs in future earthquakes is one component of loss estimation currently being developed for use in performance-based engineering. An important component of this calculation is the estimation of total uncertainty in the result, as a result of the many sources of uncertainty in the calculation. Monte Carlo simulation is a simple approach for estimation of this uncertainty, but it is computationally expensive. The procedure proposed in this report uses the first-order second-moment (FOSM) method to collapse several conditional random variables into a single...

After recent earthquakes in the U.S. and Japan, the rebuilding of the gas, road, and electric power networks that constitute the lifelines infrastructure has shown that large welfare gains can be achieved by reshaping current emergency plans as incentive-compatible contracts with lifelines service providers. This report presents a class of mechanisms for repair works that a disinterested planner without comprehensive information about repair costs could adopt to implement in a preferred location and sequence. Such mechanisms would help to coordinate repair work among firms and set the...

Considerable research is under way throughout the world to establish performance-based assessment and design methodology for buildings. Japan and the United States are at the forefront of this research effort, as well as efforts to implement the research results. The U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research in Urban Earthquake Disaster Mitigation, sponsored in Japan by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, and in the U.S. by the National Science Foundation, is funding collaborative research in Japan and the U.S. The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center in the U.S. has...

Fractures observed at the welded beam-column connections in steel moment-resisting frames after recent earthquakes have led structural engineers to investigate the hysteretic behavior of such connections. Extensive research was subsequently performed on connections, and much is now known about their behavior. However, the same cannot be said for the effects of this behavior on overall system response, particularly if degradation occurs in connection strength or stiffness. Some analytical studies have been performed, but experimental data are virtually nonexistent for systems with degrading...