A recently developed nonstationary stochastic model of strong earthquake ground motion is described. The model employs filtering of a white-noise process, where nonstationarity is achieved by modulating the intensity and varying the filter parameters in time. The model is fitted to a target accelerogram by matching a set of statistical measures that characterize the evolution of the intensity, ...

Distribution center links the relief suppliers and affected people, making it an indispensable part in the transportation network of earthquake relief supplies. Therefore, the location of distribution center for earthquake relief supplies has significant influence on transportation cost, operation efficiency and logistics performance, which are important in reducing loss of lives and property. ...

The extended finite element method (XFEM) provides a natural way to incorporate strong and weak discontinuities into discretizations. It alleviates the need to mesh discontinuities, allowing simulation meshes to be nearly independent of discontinuity geometry. Currently, both quasistatic deformation and dynamic earthquake rupture simulations under standard FEM are limited to simplified fault ne...

The objectives of this task are to conduct research on seismic hazards, and to provide relevant input on the expected levels of these hazards to other tasks. Other tasks requiring this input include those dealing with inventory, fragility curves, rehabilitation strategies and demonstration projects. The corresponding input is provided in various formats depending on the intended use: as peak gr...

With the aim of dramatically improving the reliability of urban earthquake response analyses, we developed an unstructured 3-D finite-element-based MPI-OpenMP hybrid seismic wave amplification simulation code, GAMERA. On the K computer, GAMERA was able to achieve a size-up efficiency of 87.1% up to the full K computer. Next, we applied GAMERA to a physics-based urban earthquake response analysi...

Evaluation of soil-foundation-structure interaction (SFSI) effects on structural response is a challenging task because of the involved impact of uncertainties in system’s parameters and randomness in the input earthquake motion. In this paper, a rational method is utilized to elucidate these effects through the use of a rheological soil-foundation-structure model in a robust probabilistic simu...

Computational disaster mitigation and reduction research unit is aimed at developing advanced largescale numerical simulation of natural disasters such as an earthquake, tsunami and heavy rain, for Kobe City and other urban areas in Hyogo Prefecture. Besides for the construction of a sophisticated urban area model and the development of new numerical codes, the unit seeks to be a bridge between...