The recorded responses of an Anchorage, Alaska, building during four significant earthquakes that occurred in 2002 are studied. Two earthquakes, including the 3 November 2002 M7.9 Denali fault earthquake, with epicenters approximately 275 km from the building, generated long trains of longperiod (.1 s) surface waves. The other two smaller earthquakes occurred at subcrustal depths practically be...

The devastating earthquake (and the corresponding tsunami) that struck the Indian Ocean near Sumatra (Indonesia) on 26 December, 2004 was extremely powerful. In the present study, a very high resolution 3D gravity image has been generated over a part of eastern Indian offshore over the Sumatran earthquake region. Four latitudinal gravity profiles have been generated across the epicenter/aftersh...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has published probabilistic earthquake hazard maps for the United States based on current knowledge of past earthquake activity and geological constraints on earthquake potential. These maps for the central and eastern United States assume standard site conditions with Swave velocities of 760 m/s in the top 30 m. For urban and infrastructure planning and long-t...

The near-field strong motions during the 1985 Michoacan earthquake (M8) are successfully simulated at broadband frequencies. For the simulation at low frequencies (0 to 1 Hz), the modified k-square model (Hisada, 1999) is used by considering the k-squared (wavenumbersquared) distributions of slip (Mendoza and Hartzell, 1989) and the incoherent rupture time. For modeling the slip velocity, the K...

Several studies have been oriented to develop methodologies for estimating inelastic response of structures; however, the estimation of inelastic seismic response spectra requires complex analyses, in such a way that traditional methods can hardly get an acceptable error. In this paper, an Artificial Neural Network ANN model is presented as an alternative to estimate inelastic response spectra ...

High-speed transit (1300 km=hr) using pods traveling in evacuated tubes has been proposed. This Short Note addresses how earthquake ground shaking is changed when it is experienced by a high-speed pod that is confined to a track. In particular, earthquake motions can cause lateral deformations of the tube that cause centripetal forces in the pod. I discuss the nature of these forces for the cas...

Significant damage of transportation infrastructure systems usually occurs during a major earthquake event. The impacts of bridge damage include not only short-term costs of structural repair, but also long-term economic consequences. In addition to initial replacement or repair costs of damage to the transportation structures, large earthquakes increase delays because of network components sev...

A base-isolated building may sometimes exhibit an undesirable large response to a long-duration, long-period earthquake ground motion and a connected building system without base-isolation may show a large response to a near-fault (rather high-frequency) earthquake ground motion. To overcome both deficiencies, a new hybrid control system of base-isolation and building-connection is proposed and...

We analyze previously published geodetic data and intensity values for the Ms = 8.1 Shillong (1897), Ms = 7.8 Kangra (1905), and Ms = 8.2 Nepal/Bihar (1934) earthquakes to investigate the rupture zones of these earthquakes as well as the amplification of ground motions throughout the Punjab, Ganges and Brahmaputra valleys. For each earthquake we subtract the observed MSK intensities from a synt...