earthquake has always endangered cities. this article mainly focuses on the question “whether seismic damages could be diminished through the presentation a preventive operational pattern dealing with physical and nonphysical features of civil defense”. tehran, the most populous metropolis among iranian cities is to the south of alborz mountain range, located on potentially dangerous fault- lin...

earthquake has always endangered cities. this article mainly focuses on the question “whether seismic damages could be diminished through the presentation a preventive operational pattern dealing with physical and nonphysical features of civil defense”. tehran, the most populous metropolis among iranian cities is to the south of alborz mountain range, located on potentially dangerous fault- lin...

Natural hazards, and especially earthquakes, are often recurring phenomena. Therefore, there is a permanent need for solutions to reduce earthquake losses by developing technologies, procedures, knowledge, and tools for seismic design and rehabilitation of buildings and infrastructure. A key point to an effective decision making process that aims at mitigating their effects is building a model ...

In the fall of 1998, the Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation initiated a series of studies related to the seismic performance of the U.S. national highway system. The research conducted under this study is intended to provide improved tools for evaluating and assessing the social costs and impacts of earthquakes on highway systems and bridges, and to reduce t...

Vulnerability refers to the degree of an individual subject to the damage arising from a catastrophic disaster. It is affected by multiple indicators that include hazard intensity, environment, and individual characteristics. The traditional area aggregate approach does not differentiate the individuals exposed to the disaster. In this article, we propose a new solution of modeling vulnerabilit...

A probabilistic method was developed for ranking Canadian hydropower dams according to their seismic vulnerability. The method is based on the probabilistic seismic hazard at the dam location, the seismic fragility of the dam, and the construction date of the dam. The seismic hazard is represented by the peak ground acceleration of seismic motions at the dam location for a specified probability...

This paper presents a contribution for the safety assessment of historical masonry buildings under seismic loading. Three different simplified safety indexes (in-plan area ratio, area to weight ratio and base shear ratio) are analyzed, taking into account a large sample of fifty-eight Portuguese churches. The sample of building has been organized according to the seismic zonation, from high to ...

The Azores archipelago is a zone with a vast cultural heritage, presenting a building stock mainly constructed in traditional stone masonry. It is known that this type of construction exhibits poor behaviour under seismic excitations; however it is extensively used in seismic prone areas, such as this case. The 9th of July of 1998 earthquake was the last seismic event in the islands, leaving ma...

This paper examines the earthquake resistant design and construction practices prevailing in India. Results of a set of studies conducted to estimate the seismic performance of Indian housing stock, are presented. A field survey was conducted in the National Capital Region to assess the expected seismic performance of multistorey buildings, as these are so-called ‘engineered’ buildings and the ...