Table Of ContentIncreasing Seismic Safety by Combining
Engineering Technologies
and Seismological Data
NATO Science for Peace and Security Series
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Series C:Environmental Security
Increasing Seismic Safety
by Combining Engineering
Technologies and
Seismological Data
Edited by
Marco Mucciarelli
UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff BBaassiilliiccaattaa,, DDeeppaarrttmmeenntt ooff SSttrruuccttuurreess,,
SSooiill DDyynnaammiiccss aanndd AApppplliieedd GGeeoollooggyy,
PPootteennzzaa,, IIttaallyy
Marijan Herak
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Science, Department of Geophysics,
Zagreb, Croatia
and
John Cassidy
Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada,
Sidney, BC, Canada
ABC
Published in cooperation with NATO Public Diplomacy Division
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on
Increasing Seismic Safety by Combining Engineering Technologies
and Seismological Data
Dubrovnik, Croatia
19–21 September 2007
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008936835
ISBN 978-1-4020-9194-0 (PB)
ISBN 978-1-4020-9193-3 (HB)
ISBN 978-1-4020-9196 -4 (e-book)
Published by Springer,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AADordrecht, The Netherlands.
www.springer.com
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception
of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a
computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
Contents
Introduction.................................................... ix
Contributors....................................................... xiii
ParticipantSketches ................................................ xvi
1 TheUseofAmbientNoiseforBuildingandSoilCharacterisation ... 1
MarijanHerak
1.1 TheNeedforStandardizedApproachforEstimatingtheLocal
SiteEffectsBasedonAmbientNoiseRecordings ............. 3
KuvvetAtakan
1.2 AreTransientsCarryingUsefulInformationforEstimating
H/VSpectralRatios? .................................... 17
StefanoParolai,MatteoPicozzi,AngeloStrollo,MarcoPilz,
DomenicoDiGiacomo,BarbaraLiss,andDinoBindi
1.3 BasicStructureofQTS(HVSR)andExamples
ofApplications.......................................... 33
YutakaNakamura
1.4 AmbientNoiseandSiteResponse:FromEstimationofSite
EffectstoDeterminationoftheSubsoilStructure............. 53
FranciscoJ.Cha´vez-Garc´ıa
1.5 In-SituEstimatesofMaterialDampingfromEnvironmental
NoiseMeasurements ..................................... 73
DarioAlbarelloandFrancescoBaliva
1.6 Estimates of Vs30 Based on Constrained H/V Ratio
MeasurementsAlone..................................... 85
SilviaCastellaroandFrancescoMulargia
v
vi Contents
1.7 Comparison of Recorded Dynamic Characteristics
ofStructuresandGroundDuringStrongandWeakShaking ... 99
MehmetC¸elebi
1.8 HVSR Technique Improvement Using Redundant
WaveletTransform ...................................... 117
FilipposVallianatosandGeorgeHloupis
2 EffectofBuildingsonFree-FieldGroundMotion................. 139
MarcoMucciarelli
2.1 Effect of Building-Building Interaction on “Free-Field”
GroundMotion ......................................... 141
MarcoMucciarelli,RoccoDitommaso,MariaRosariaGallipoli,
andFelicePonzo
3 RoleofDynamicPropertiesonBuildingVulnerability............. 147
AngeloMasi
3.1 HowFarAmbientNoiseMeasurementMayHelptoAssess
BuildingVulnerability? .................................. 151
ClaudeBoutinandSte´phaneHans
3.2 AssessmentofSeismicCapacityofExistingBuildings–Effects
ofUncertainties ......................................... 181
DimitriosBaros,MiltiadisKyrkos,AndreasMaravas,
andStavrosAnagnostopoulos
3.3 EstimationofthePeriodofVibrationofExistingRCBuilding
TypesBasedonExperimentalDataandNumericalResults..... 207
AngeloMasiandMarcoVona
3.4 Retrofitting and Strengthening Evaluation from Stiffness
VariationsofaDamagedBuildingfromAmbientVibration
Recordings ............................................. 227
MohammedN.Farsi,BertrandGuillier,Jean-LucChatelain,
andSid-AhmedZermout
4 State-of-the-Art–RecentAdvancesandApplications ............. 239
JohnF.Cassidy
4.1 MicrotremorSoil-StructureResonanceStudyintheBovec
Basin(NWSlovenia) Related to1998 and 2004 Damaging
Earthquakes............................................ 241
AndrejGosar
4.2 RecentEarthquakeSiteResponseStudiesinCanada.......... 257
JohnF.CassidyandSheriMolnar
Contents vii
4.3 RecentApplicationsofAmbientVibrationMeasurements
inCroatia .............................................. 281
MarijanHerak
4.4 ApplicationstoWorldHeritageSites ....................... 293
YutakaNakamura,JunSaita,andTsutomuSato
4.5 TwoApplicationsoftheHVSRTechniquetoCulturalHeritage
andHistoricalMasonry .................................. 325
DomenicoLiberatore,MarcoMucciarelli,MariaRosariaGallipoli,
andNicolaMasini
4.6 OverviewofSeismicHazardStudiesinTunisCity ............ 337
NajlaBouden-Romdhane,PierreMechler,Anne-MarieDuval,
andSamehAnibi
4.7 AnEmpiricalGeotechnicalSeismicSiteResponseProcedure... 353
AdrianRodriguez-Marek,JonathanD.Bray,
andNormA.Abrahamson
5 Conclusions ................................................ 381
Introduction
Thecurrentstate-of-the-artallowsseismologiststogivestatisticalestimatesofthe
probability of a large earthquake striking a given region, identifying the areas in
whichtheseismichazardisthehighest.However,theusefulnessoftheseestimates
islimited,withoutinformationaboutlocalsubsoilconditionsandthevulnerability
of buildings. Identifying the sites where a local amplification of seismic shaking
willoccur,andidentifyingthebuildingsthatwillbetheweakestundertheseismic
shakingistheonlystrategythatallowseffectivedefenceagainstearthquakedamage
atanaffordablecost,byapplyingselectivereinforcementonlytothestructuresthat
needit.
Unfortunately, too often the Earth’s surface acted as a divide between seismol-
ogists and engineers. Now it is becoming clear that the building behaviour largely
dependsontheseismicinputandthebuildingsontheirturnactasseismicsources,
inanintricateinterplaythatnon-linearphenomenamakeevenmorecomplex.These
phenomenaareoftenthecauseofobserveddamageenhancementduringpastearth-
quakes.Whileresearchmaypursuecomplexmodelstofullyunderstandsoildynam-
ics under seismic loading, we need, at the same time, simple models valid on
average, whose results can be easily transferred to end users without prohibitive
expenditure.Verycomplexmodelsrequirealargeamountofdatathatcanonlybe
obtainedataveryhighcostormaybeimpossibletogetatall.
Today,theinteractionbetweenengineersandseismologistsisincreasing,butstill
manyquestionsremainunanswered.TheideaoforganizingtheAdvancedResearch
Workshop (ARW) in Dubrovnik, Croatia (19–21 September, 2007, http://nato.
gfz.hr/Arw/Arw.html) came from recent discussions during meetings that put
together seismologists and engineers: the NATO Science for Peace project named
“Assessment of Seismic Site Amplification and Seismic Building Vulnerability in
theFYRMacedonia,CroatiaandSlovenia”(ASSASBV,moredetailsathttp://nato.
gfz.hr), the ECEES Conference, Session STS-10 (http://www.usc.edu/dept/civil
eng/Earthquake eng/ECEES STS-E10/) and a joint seismologists-engineers work-
shopheldinItaly(http://www.reluis.it/).
ix
x Introduction
Under the title “Increasing Seismic Safety by Combining Engineering
Technologies and Seismological Data”, we grouped several topics to be discussed
togetherbyengineersandseismologists:
1. Can we use ambient noise building and soil characterisation to extract useful
informationforengineers?
2. Howwecantellapartafrequencydecreaseduetodistributeddamage,concen-
trateddamage,time-varyingbuildingandsoilbehaviour?
3. Whichistheroleoftransientsinambientnoiseanalysis?
4. Canwequantifytheinfluenceofexistingbuildingsonground-motionrecordings
(bothnoiseandearthquake)?
5. Towhichextentsoil-buildingresonanceisacauseofdamageenhancement?
6. Howtocouplesoilandbuildingnon-linearbehaviour?
TheARWaimedtobringtogetherthemostrecentexperiencefromhighlyqualified
scientists, compare national experience and ongoing projects, and provide frame-
workfordiscussionamongparticipants.
Theexpectedoutcomeswereguidelinesthatwillhelptomakethemostofcurrent
practice,newideastobeputforwardinfutureresearchandgivetheopportunityto
devisenew,largerprojectsonatrans-nationalbasis.
Among the examples of possible practical results to be implemented following
theoutcomeofthemeetingare:
• Modificationtoexistingbuildingcodesforsoilclassification
• Simplified approaches to building vulnerability and soil-building resonance, to
beputinpracticeinmegacities
However, it has to be pointed out that we did not want to reach consensus at all
costs.Amongtheinvitedspeakers,someareknownfordifferentpointsofviewon
some topics. The organisers believe that only from the comparison of contrasting
theories it is possible to achieve advancements in knowledge. If a single idea was
agreed upon, this was most welcome. But when contrasting views remained, they
arefairlyrepresentedinworkshopproceedings,sotostimulatefurtherresearch.The
conclusionoftheARWrepresentthecurrentstatusofknowledge.Onmostquestion
thereisanunanimousanswer,butinsomecasesdifferentviewsarepresentandthe
disagreementisfaithfullyreported.
The Editors wish to acknowledge the support of the NATO Science committee
thatmadepossibletheorganisationoftheworkshopandthepublicationofthisbook.
LecturesGiven
Wednesday,19September,9:30–13:00
MarijanHerak–MarcoMucciarelli:WelcomespeechandpresentationofProject
ASSASBV(NATOSfP980857)
Introduction xi
Kuvvet Atakan: The need for standardized H/V spectral ratio approach: Data
collection,processingandinterpretation
PacoChavez-Garcia:Seismicnoise,soilresponse,andsubsoilstructure
YutakaNakamura:CharacteristicsofH/VSpectrum
Wednesday,19September,15:00–18:30
DarioAlbarello:Insituestimateofseismicattenuationfromnoisemeasurements
Francesco Mulargia: Constrained single-station only HVSR estimates of Vs30
anddeviationsfrom1-Dsubsoilgeometry
Andrej Gosar: Microtremor study for assessing site effects in the Bovec basin
(NWSlovenia)relatedto1998Mw5.6and2004Mw5.2earthquakes
JohnF.Cassidy:EarthquakeSiteResponseStudiesinCanada:RecentAdvances
andApplications
Thursday,20September,9:30–13:00
Adrian Rodriguez-Marek: Geotechnical Site Classifications for Building Code
Applications
John Douglas: Using seismological data to improve ground-motion predictions
forengineeringpurposes
AdrianRodriguez-Marek:GeotechnicalAspectsoftheAugust15,2007Mw8.0
Pisco,PeruEarthquake:PreliminaryObservations
Pierre-Yves Bard: Modifications to seismic hazard due to urban environment:
increaseordecrease–Constraintsfromnumericalandphysicalmodelling
Thursday,20September,15:00–18:30
MarcoMucciarelli:Effectofbuiltenvironmenton“freefield”groundmotion
Jun Saita: Vulnerability Assessment for Ground and Structures using Ambient
Noise
Marijan Herak: Recent measurements of ambient vibrations in buildings in
Croatia
ZoranMilutinovic´:Modalanalysisofspecialstructuresusingambientvibration
Friday,21September,9:30–13:00
Dominik H. Lang: The application of ambient seismic noise for engineering
purposes
ClaudeBoutin:Howfarambientnoisemeasurementsmayhelptoassessbuilding
vulnerability?
StavrosA.Anagnostopoulos:Assessmentofseismiccapacityofexistingbuild-
ingsunderuncertainsoilproperties
Najla Bouden Romdhane: Overview of Seismic Site Response Analysis in
TunisCity
Friday,21September,15:00–18:30
Mehmet Celebi: Comparison of recorded dynamic characteristics of structures
andgroundduringstrongandweakshaking
