Organizers: Nicolas Luco, Paul Somerville, and Swami Krishnan
Date: September 12, 2010 (1:00-5:00pm)
Location: Horizon Ballroom II, Hilton Palm Springs Resort
Participants: view list of registrants

Description: At present there are contrasting viewpoints on the issue of tall building safety in Southern California, with some researchers suggesting that tall buildings may be particularly vulnerable while design professionals tend to think that they may be safer than other categories of buildings. The purpose of this workshop is to stimulate discussion on the topic of tall building safety in Southern California, with a special focus on earthquake ground motions simulated by SCEC, their scientific basis and validity, their appropriate use, and their relevance to the issue of tall building safety. The workshop will begin with presentations on ground motions that have been simulated by SCEC and used in analyses of building response. Next, there will be mini-debates on the following three questions, based in part on past and ongoing SCEC research: Are SCEC ground motion simulations improbably high? Do simulated and recorded time histories produce different building responses? What different perspectives come from deterministic scenarios (such as ShakeOut and other scenarios generated by SCEC) vs. probabilistic risk (as used in CyberShake and building codes)? There will then be a summary of the debates as they relate to different perspectives on tall building safety, and discussion of research topics that could help resolve differences of opinion. It is expected that the workshop will lead to a better mutual understanding of different viewpoints, and to the identification of future work in which SCEC research can contribute further to the evaluation of tall building safety in Southern California.

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