A method is offered to estimate downtime (the time to restore a facility to operability, not total repair time) for second-generation performance-based earthquake engineering. It applies in cases where downtime is primarily controlled by nonstructural systems (although red-tagging and lifeline failure are addressed); restoration begins immediately after the earthquake; and components are repair...

MSC is announcing a new business offering based upon a breakthrough technology. MSC has developed a means by which design engineers or occasional CAE software users can reliably perform complex engineering analysis with the same resultant quality as do the dedicated analysis experts. This breakthrough technology captures the expert’s engineering knowledge and specific process solution methodolo...

Earthquakes are one of the most destructive natural disasters with devastating consequences on people and their supporting infrastructure. To alleviate earthquake consequences, recovery process building systems, essential for providing continued operation, should be considered during design building. This study presents a novel, probabilistic, building-level framework modeling evaluating entire...

MSC is announcing a new business offering based upon a breakthrough technology. MSC has developed a means by which design engineers or occasional CAE software users can reliably perform complex engineering analysis with the same resultant quality as do the dedicated analysis experts. This breakthrough technology captures the expert’s engineering knowledge and specific process solution methodolo...

A critical step in performance-based seismic design is the prediction and definition of earthquake performance using terms that are meaningful to building owners. Recently, economic impact, defined as the cost of repairing earthquake damage and the building downtime required to complete the repair work, has been adopted as a meaningful measure of building performance. To enable earthquake engin...

Broader Impacts. The Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) conducts a broad program of earthquake system science that seeks to develop a predictive understanding of earthquake processes with a practical mission aimed at providing society with improved understanding of seismic hazards. In partnership with earthquake engineers, SCEC researchers are developing the ability to conduct end-to-...

Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems have been rapidly developing over the past decade. Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has an EEW system that was operating during the 2011 M9 Tohoku earthquake in Japan, and this increased the awareness of EEW systems around the world. While longer-time earthquake prediction still faces many challenges to be practical, the availability of shorter-time EEW o...