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SUMMARY:What if we could minimize financial loss from earthquakes….
DTSTART:20150529T121500
DTEND:20150529T131500
DTSTAMP:20260929T094041Z
UID:d13055ec4096aab982615659d07166b890b99036597e3628f6b2a232
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Rajesh Dhakal\, University of Canterbury\, Christchurch\
 , New Zealand\nSynopsis\nIn the last century\, seismic design has undergon
 e significant advancements. Starting from the initial concept of designing
  structures to sustain no or minimal damage during an earthquake\, the mod
 ern seismic design philosophy allows structures to respond to ground excit
 ations in an inelastic manner\, thereby allowing damage in earthquakes tha
 t are significantly less intense than the largest possible ground motion a
 t the site of the structure. Current performance-based multi-objective sei
 smic design methods aim to ensure life-safety in large and rare earthquake
 s and to limit structural damage in frequent and moderate earthquakes. As 
 a result\, not many recently built buildings have collapsed and very few p
 eople have been killed in 21st century buildings even in large earthquakes
 . Nevertheless\, the financial losses to the community arising from damage
  and downtime in these earthquakes have been unacceptably high. This has r
 aised a new question\; “what if we could minimize financial loss from ea
 rthquakes?”\nIt was well-known before the earthquakes that our old and u
 nreinforced masonry (URM) building stock was seismically deficient and nee
 ded urgent intervention to enhance their performance. These buildings were
  not expected to come out unscathed after such severe shakings. Still\, it
  was very unfortunate that collapse of some of our old buildings resulted 
 in significant loss of life. Nevertheless\, modern buildings built in the 
 21st century using the current design philosophy in general did better tha
 n what they were expected to do in much severer shakings than they were de
 signed for. Consequently\, some engineers have been (justifiably) claiming
  that the performance of building stock in the Canterbury earthquakes was 
 generally better than expected. This has perplexed the general public\, wh
 o has been reading in media the continually growing amount attributed as e
 arthquake induced cost. They may be pondering: “How can the engineers sa
 y we have done well? Do we need to go broke before they realize we have fa
 iled miserably?” This difference is mainly because of the different expe
 ctations of the engineers (life-safety) and the general public (economic c
 onsequences). Hence\, it is high time that the seismic design objectives b
 e matched in line with public expectations.\nIn this pretext\, the seminar
  will try to answer the following questions:\nWhat unexpected did we obser
 ve in recent earthquakes and did we learn anything new?\nWhy is current ea
 rthquake-resistant design approach unable to minimize loss?\nHow is struct
 ural performance related to loss?\nHow can we reduce loss from earthquakes
 ?\nWhere to in future?\nBio : Prof Rajesh Dhakal has a Bachelor degree in 
 Civil Engineering from Tribhuvan University\, Nepal\, Master of Structural
  Engineering from the Asian Institute of Technology\, Thailand\, and a PhD
  from Tokyo University\, Japan. His research interests are in the areas of
  seismic performance of reinforced concrete structures\; non-structural el
 ements\; and seismic loss estimation. He has supervised more than postgrad
 uate (ME/PhD) students and has authored more than 250 technical papers in 
 the areas of reinforced concrete\, earthquake engineering\, and structural
  fire engineering. He has received multiple research awards including the 
 prestigious EQC-NZSEE Ivan Skinner award for the advancement of earthquake
  engineering research in New Zealand. He is a fellow of IPENZ (Institution
  of Professional Engineers in NZ). He served as an Associate Editor for th
 e ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering from 2007 to 2013\, and is curren
 tly the chief Editor of the Bulletin of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engi
 neering (NZSEE).
LOCATION:GC B3 30 http://plan.epfl.ch/?lang=fr&room=GCB330
STATUS:CANCELLED
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