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Engineering seismology

Class at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
NDGF030

Syllabus

* Introduction

Science vs. Engineering. Seismic hazard vs. Seismic risk. Engineering seismology vs. Earthquake engineering.

* Pre-instrumental seismology

Historical seismology. Archeoseismology. Paleoseismology. Macroseismic intensity. Macroseismic catalogue.

* Instrumental seismology

Accelerometric networks. Strong motion databases. Magnitudes. Instrumental catalogue.

* Ground motion parameters

Peak values of acceleration, velocity, displacement - their use. Response spectra and relation to Fourier spectra. Random vibration theory and inverse random vibration theory (RVT, resp. IRVT).

* Ground motion prediction

Ground motion prediction equations (GMPE). Analysis of uncertainties. Source - path - local effects.

* Local site effects

Geophysical and geotechnical site (MASW, CPT, ambient vibrations). Microzonation. Non-linear site response. Numerical modeling of site effects. Secondary phenomena (soil liquefaction, landslides).

* Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA)

Seismic source zonation. Probability distributions of earthquake sizes and ground shaking levels. Time occurrence probability distributions of seismic events. Epistemic vs. aleatory uncertainties. Logic trees. Deaggregation of PSHA. Earthquake scenarios.

* Seismic risk and building codes

Ground shaking vs. structural damage. Design spectra. Uniform hazard spectrum.

Annotation

Earthquakes are natural phenomena with high social impact. Understand the roles of geophysics, geology and earthquake engineering in earthquake hazard analysis.

Explore the issues faced in seismic hazard assessments for the areas of interest on case studies of recent earthquakes. Learn the procedures which can be directly applied in practice (e.g., reinsurance industry), as well as current topics of the basic geophysical research with high public importance.