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...

In this paper, a grid-based cluster division procedure, in combination with a novel maximum likelihood estimate based on multinomial distribution, is proposed to derive fragility curves for medium- and low-rise reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Taiwan. This new grid-based method generates...

Site effects studies using microtremor free-field measurements were performed recently in five Slovenian towns characterized by increased seismic hazard to determine resonance frequency of soft sediments. In this study, microtremor investigations were extended to the measurements inside...

Mexico City, political and economic center of Mexico, was founded in a lake, at more than 2000 m above sea level. The lacustrine mud under the downtown area is associated with high seismic risk. Twenty years after the destructive 1985 earthquake (Ms = 8.1) we review published research on...

The assessment of local site effects on seismic ground motions is of great importance in earthquake engineering practice. Several destructive earthquakes in the past have demonstrated that the amplification of ground motion and associated damage to structures due to local site conditions is a...

This paper describes the behaviour of Port Island in Kobe city during and after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 17 January 1995. The island is near the city centre and was constructed on the soft seabed in Kobe Port. A vertical array of four seismometers and pore water pressure sensors recorded...

In order to study the seismic response of the embankment slopes with different reinforcing measures, shaking table tests were performed on three embankment slope models (i.e., unreinforced embankment slope, 2-layer reinforced embankment slope and 4-layer reinforced embankment slope). Wenchuan...

A tower of an offshore wind turbine usually has several sections. The sections need to be assembled to form a full tower and be ready for nacelle installation. The assembly work can be performed at a designated sea site but it can be exposed in many risks. Instead, towers can be pre-assembled at...

This paper presents a reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) method for a monopile transition piece in an offshore wind turbine system. Two design approaches are investigated for the cost-effective and reliable design of the monopile transition piece: deterministic optimization (DO) and...