Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures provides requirements for general structural design and includes means for determining dead, live, soil, flood, wind, snow, rain, atmospheric ice, and earthquake loads, as well as their combinations, which are suitable for inclusion in building codes and other documents. This Standard, a revision of ASCE/SEI 7-05, offers a complete update and reorganization of the wind load provisions, expanding them from one chapter into six. The Standard contains new ultimate event wind maps with corresponding reductions in load factors, so that the loads are not affected, and updates the seismic loads with new risk-targeted seismic maps. The snow, live, and atmospheric icing provisions are updated as well. In addition, the Standard includes a detailed Commentary with explanatory and supplementary information designed to assist building code committees and regulatory authorities. Standard ASCE/SEI 7 is an integral part of building codes in the United States. Many of the load provisions are substantially adopted by reference in the International Building Code and the NFPA 5000 Building Construction and Safety Code. Structural engineers, architects, and those engaged in preparing and administering local building codes will find this Standard an essential reference in their practice. Note: New orders are fulfilled from the second printing, which incorporates the errata to the first printing.

Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures

Since 1990, natural hazards have led to over 1.6 million fatalities globally, and economic losses are estimated at an average of around USD 260–310 billion per year. The scientific and policy communities recognise the need to reduce these risks. As a result, the last decade has seen a rapid development of global models for assessing risk from natural hazards at the global scale. In this paper, we review the scientific literature on natural hazard risk assessments at the global scale, and we specifically examine whether and how they have examined future projections of hazard, exposure, and/or vulnerability. In doing so, we examine similarities and differences between the approaches taken across the different hazards, and we identify potential ways in which different hazard communities can learn from each other. For example, there are a number of global risk studies focusing on hydrological, climatological, and meteorological hazards that have included future projections and disaster risk reduction measures (in the case of floods), whereas fewer exist in the peer-reviewed literature for global studies related to geological hazards. On the other hand, studies of earthquake and tsunami risk are now using stochastic modelling approaches to allow for a fully probabilistic assessment of risk, which could benefit the modelling of risk from other hazards. Finally, we discuss opportunities for learning from methods and approaches being developed and applied to assess natural hazard risks at more continental or regional scales. Through this paper, we hope to encourage further dialogue on knowledge sharing between disciplines and communities working on different hazards and risk and at different spatial scales.

/pdf/review-article-natural-hazard-risk-assessments-at-the-global-3ucy3f0nyw.pdf

Review article: Natural hazard risk assessments at the global scale

In this study, we develop stochastic random-field slip models for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and conduct a rigorous sensitivity analysis of tsunami hazards with respect to the uncertainty of earthquake slip and fault geometry. Synthetic earthquake slip distributions generated from the modified Mai-Beroza method captured key features of inversion-based source representations of the mega-thrust event, which were calibrated against rich geophysical observations of this event. Using original and synthesised earthquake source models (varied for strike, dip, and slip distributions), tsunami simulations were carried out and the resulting variability in tsunami hazard estimates was investigated. The results highlight significant sensitivity of the tsunami wave profiles and inundation heights to the coastal location and the slip characteristics, and indicate that earthquake slip characteristics are a major source of uncertainty in predicting tsunami risks due to future mega-thrust events.

/pdf/sensitivity-of-tsunami-wave-profiles-and-inundation-3sxu7s3r5q.pdf

Sensitivity of tsunami wave profiles and inundation simulations to earthquake slip and fault geometry for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake

Rupture complexity, typically in the form of heterogeneous slip distribution pattern, significantly affects the local tsunami wave field. However, the effect of rupture complexity is not commonly considered in any form of tsunami hazard assessment. Taking rupture complexity into account significantly increases the computational load, particularly in regional-scaled probabilistic tsunami hazard assessments (PTHAs) that usually require a large number of simulations based on synthetic scenarios. In this study, we investigate how the heterogeneous slip distribution affects the regional-scaled PTHA by taking the South China Sea (SCS) as an example. By doing this, we update PTHA for the SCS by incorporating the best available information of seismic tsunamigenic sources along the Manila megathrust. We integrate a stochastic source model into a Monte Carlo-type simulation, in which a broad range of slip distribution patterns is generated for large numbers of synthetic earthquake events. Green's function technique is employed to efficiently calculate the nearshore tsunami wave amplitude along the SCS coastlines. Our result suggests that for a relatively small and confined region like the SCS, the commonly used approach based on the uniform slip model significantly underestimates tsunami hazard not only in the near-source region like west Luzon, as expected, but also in the relative far field, such as south China and central Vietnam. Additionally, our sensitivity test of the patch size effects suggests that large patch size is unable to adequately resolve the details of heterogeneous seafloor deformation, and such approaches considerably underestimate the potential tsunami hazard for the SCS coasts.

How heterogeneous coseismic slip affects regional probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment: A case study in the South China Sea

The use of empirical vulnerability functions to assess the response of buildings to tsunami impact: Comparative review and summary of best practice

A large amount of buildings was damaged or destroyed by the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami. Numerous field surveys were conducted in order to collect the tsunami inundation extents and building damage data in the affected areas. Therefore, this event provides us with one of the most complete data set among tsunami events in history. In this study, fragility functions are derived using data provided by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation of Japan, with more than 250,000 structures surveyed. The set of data has details on damage level, structural material, number of stories per building and location (town). This information is crucial to the understanding of the causes of building damage, as differences in structural characteristics and building location can be taken into account in the damage probability analysis. Using least squares regression, different sets of fragility curves are derived to demonstrate the influence of structural material, number of stories and coastal topography on building damage levels. The results show a better resistant performance of reinforced concrete and steel buildings over wood or masonry buildings. Also, buildings taller than two stories were confirmed to be much stronger than the buildings of one or two stories. The damage characteristic due to the coastal topography based on limited number of data in town locations is also shortly discussed here. At the same tsunami inundation depth, buildings along the Sanriku ria coast were much greater damaged than buildings from the plain coast in Sendai. The difference in damage states can be explained by the faster flow velocities in the ria coast at the same inundation depth. These findings are key to support better future building damage assessments, land use management and disaster planning.

/pdf/building-damage-characteristics-based-on-surveyed-data-and-174cumw693.pdf

Building damage characteristics based on surveyed data and fragility curves of the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami

We created a fault model with a Tohoku-type earthquake fault zone having a random slip distribution and performed stochastic tsunami hazard analysis using a logic tree. When the stochastic tsunami hazard analysis results and the Tohoku earthquake observation results were compared, the observation results of a GPS wave gauge off the southern Iwate coast indicated a return period equivalent to approximately 1,709 years (0.50 fractile), and the observation results of a GPS wave gauge off the shore of Fukushima Prefecture indicated a return period of 600 years (0.50 fractile). Analysis of the influence of the number of slip distribution patterns on the results of the stochastic tsunami hazard analysis showed that the number of slip distribution patterns considered greatly influenced the results of the hazard analysis for a relatively large wave height. When the 90 % confidence interval and coefficient of variation of tsunami wave height were defined as an index for projecting the uncertainty of tsunami wave height, the 90 % confidence interval was typically high in locations where the wave height of each fractile point was high. At a location offshore of the Boso Peninsula of Chiba Prefecture where the coefficient of variation reached the maximum, it was confirmed that variations in maximum wave height due to differences in slip distribution of the fault zone contributed to the coefficient of variation being large.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00477-014-0966-4.pdf

Stochastic analysis and uncertainty assessment of tsunami wave height using a random source parameter model that targets a Tohoku-type earthquake fault

Several Social Factors Contributing to Floods and Characteristics of the January 2013 Flood in Jakarta, Indonesia

Based on the definition of tsunami risk, we quantitatively evaluated the annual expected tsunami loss ratio (Tsunami Risk Index) and clarified the quantitative effects of epistemic uncertainties in tsunami hazard assessments on the tsunami risk of buildings by combining probabilistic information regarding tsunami inundation depths at target points and tsunami fragility assessments of buildings. For the risk assessment, we targeted buildings with four different structures (reinforced concrete, steel, brick, wood) located in three different areas (Soma, Sendai, Kesennuma). In conclusion, we demonstrated that the expected tsunami risk could vary by approximately two orders of magnitude when considering tsunami hazard uncertainties between the 95th percentile and the 5th percentile. In addition, we quantitatively clarified the fact that we cannot properly understand the tsunami risk by evaluating the tsunami fragility alone. For example, the analysis results indicate that the tsunami risk of a wood building located in Kesennuma is lower than that of a reinforced concrete building located in either Soma or Sendai.

Yo Fukutani

Papers

Building damage characteristics based on surveyed data and fragility curves of the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami

Building damage characteristics based on surveyed data and fragility curves of the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami

Stochastic analysis and uncertainty assessment of tsunami wave height using a random source parameter model that targets a Tohoku-type earthquake fault

Several Social Factors Contributing to Floods and Characteristics of the January 2013 Flood in Jakarta, Indonesia

Quantitative Assessment of Epistemic Uncertainties in Tsunami Hazard Effects on Building Risk Assessments