Next Meeting - Thursday, September 11th

Our next meeting is on Thursday, September 11th at Pizzeria Uno in downtown Tempe. Things get started at the usual time (6pm) with drinks and networking and move forward from there. The presentation is titled “State-of-the-Art Seismic Hazard Analysis for the Greater Phoenix Area” by Simon Ghanat, Graduate Student at ASU. Simon is Dr. Edward Kavazanjian’s student and Dr. Kavazanjian will be co-presenting. The talk’s abstract is below.

I hope to see you all at the meeting!

State-of-the-Art Seismic Hazard Analysis for the Greater Phoenix Area

by

Simon Ghanat, Graduate Student

and

Edward Kavazanjian, Jr., Associate Professor

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Arizona State University

Recent (2003, 2006) increases in the return period for earthquake design ground motions in the International Building Code have significantly increased seismic design requirements for many structures in the greater Phoenix area. However, provisions in the code for site-specific analyses allow for a reduction of up to 20% in design ground motions evaluated on the basis of the USGS national seismic hazard maps, thereby reducing seismic design requirements to earlier levels. Potential sources of a reduction in the design ground motions include changes in the seismic source parameters used in the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis and the influence of local soil conditions on site response. Site-specific probabilistic seismic hazard analyses conducted using the best available information on local seismic sources and next generation strong ground motion attenuation relationships that include the influence of local site conditions show that in some parts of the greater Phoenix area a reduction in design ground motions and a return to the pre-2006 seismic design requirements may be justified. However, in other parts of the greater Phoenix area, seismic design ground motions greater than the values from the national seismic hazard maps may be appropriate.