Performance-Based Engineering of Resilient Communities
Event details
| Date | 24.11.2011 |
| Hour | 12:15 |
| Speaker | Prof. Bozidar Stojadinovic |
| Location |
GC C330
|
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Communities are complex systems of people, structures and infrastructure, both physical and social. Response of communities to disasters is much more than the sum of the responses of its constitutive parts. Yet, today, design methods are focused on individual structures, as if they each were standing alone. For example, we have tools to predict the seismic response of individual highway bridges but we lack methods to predict the response of the entire regional highway system to a disaster. Resilience of communities is, therefore, difficult to engineer using the present framework.
In this talk I will present a probabilistic performance-based framework for engineering resilient communities that addresses systems of structures and infrastructure rather than collections of individual entities. First, I will attempt to define the seismic resilience of communities, and describe the
properties of a performance-based community-level seismic design framework.
Second, I will illustrate the fundamental knowledge, enabling technologies, and engineered systems needed to constitute the new framework using
three examples from my ongoing research: rocking of post-tensioned bridge columns; modeling bridge ability to carry traffic load after an earthquake; and evaluation of how new technologies and materials, such as base isolation and fiber-reinforced concrete, affect system design choices.
Third, I will conclude by outlining the framework for performance-based engineering of resilient communities, focusing on the changes in hazard exposure and performance objective selection. I will also discuss the new research needed to implement such design framework in civil engineering practice. Society of tomorrow must have an order of magnitude more confidence in the resilience of the physical and social infrastructure then it does today.
Performance-based engineering of resilient communities is an important contribution Civil Engineers can make towards this worthy goal.
Bio: Dr Bozidar Stojadinovic recently joined the ETH Zurich as full professor of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics. His research interest comprise, for example, the development of probabilistic performance-based seismic design tools and the simulation of earthquake motion and response of structures in an urban region. Bozidar received numerous awards among these the ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 2004.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Prof. Katrin Beyer