Performance of Transportation Systems in the 2003 Bam, Iran, Earthquake

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 455-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sassan Eshghi ◽  
Masoud N. Ahari

An earthquake with a moment magnitude of 6.5 hit the city of Bam in southern Iran at 5:26 am local time, Friday, 26 December 2003. According to the Iranian government's estimate, the earthquake caused more than 43,000 deaths, 30,000 injuries, and left 70,000 people homeless. It caused extensive damage to residential and commercial buildings and emergency response facilities. In contrast to the human loss and suffering and extended building damage, lifeline systems, although damaged, performed much better. Transportation systems and facilities (roads, bridges, railways, and the airport), although slightly to moderately damaged, became generally operational shortly after the earthquake to support emergency response and recovery efforts. The main reason for the good seismic performance of the transportation facilities was that most of them were located outside the zone that was heavily damaged. Another reason was that they were newer facilities and in general, seismic engineering aspects considered in their design and construction were more exact than those in residential buildings in Iran.

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 375-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sassan Eshghi ◽  
Kiarash Naserasadi

A devastating earthquake hit the city of Bam in the south of Iran at 5:26 a.m. local time, Friday, 26 December 2003. Based on the government of Iran's February estimate, the earthquake caused more than 43,000 deaths, 30,000 injuries, and left 70,000 homeless. It caused extensive damage to residential and commercial buildings and emergency response facilities. Essential buildings usually play a very important role in emergency response, but this was not the case in the Bam earthquake. Damage to the fire station, hospitals, and municipal and communications buildings caused serious problems in emergency response soon after the earthquake. This paper studies the performance of essential buildings during the Bam earthquake.


Author(s):  
Angela Liu ◽  
David Carradine

The goal of this study is to develop a racking model of plasterboard-sheathed timber walls as part of the efforts towards performance-based seismic engineering of low-rise light timber-framed (LTF) residential buildings in New Zealand. Residential buildings in New Zealand are primarily stand-alone low-rise LTF buildings, and their bracing elements are commonly plasterboard-sheathed LTF walls. It is an essential part of performance-based seismic designs of LTF buildings to be able to simulate the racking performance of plasterboard walls. In this study, racking test results of 12 plasterboard walls were collected and studied to gain insight into the seismic performance of plasterboard-sheathed LTF walls. The racking performance of these walls was examined in terms of stiffness/strength degradation, displacement capacity, superposition applicability and failure mechanisms. Subsequently, a mathematical analysis model for simulating racking performance of LTF plasterboard walls is developed and presented. The developed racking model is a closed-form wall model and could be easily used for conducting three-dimensional non-linear push-over studies of seismic performance of LTF buildings.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 638-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Imam Wahyudi ◽  
Rick Heikoop ◽  
Henny Pratiwi Adi ◽  
Tom Overgaauw ◽  
Bram Schipper ◽  
...  

In Semarang urban coastal areas experience daily flooding from the sea during high tide (tidal flooding). Flourishing residential areas have changed into unhealthy slums with the nuisance of daily flooding in parts of the city. To overcome these problems a polder system was implemented to address the tidal flooding. The Semarang polder system is the first fully operational polder system in a densely populated urban area in Indonesia. This article describes the polder system that prevents flooding in the Eastern part of the city; the Banger polder area. An important element of the polder system is an emergency response plan that prepares for a flood emergency condition. The emergency response plan provides different emergency scenarios and identifies emergency levels and criteria. The management of emergency situations can be divided into four phases, namely mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. The research results provide a detailed description of four emergency scenarios with 3 emergency levels for each scenario in the Banger polder area. The scenarios are; pumping stations operational damage, high-intensity rainfall in combination with high tide, failure of levees and dams, and an inflow of water from the west and east side of Polder system area.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3172
Author(s):  
Suchat Tachaudomdach ◽  
Auttawit Upayokin ◽  
Nopadon Kronprasert ◽  
Kriangkrai Arunotayanun

Amidst sudden and unprecedented increases in the severity and frequency of climate-change-induced natural disasters, building critical infrastructure resilience has become a prominent policy issue globally for reducing disaster risks. Sustainable measures and procedures to strengthen preparedness, response, and recovery of infrastructures are urgently needed, but the standard for measuring such resilient elements has yet to be consensually developed. This study was undertaken with an aim to quantitatively measure transportation infrastructure robustness, a proactive dimension of resilience capacities and capabilities to withstand disasters; in this case, floods. A four-stage analytical framework was empirically implemented: 1) specifying the system and disturbance (i.e., road network and flood risks in Chiang Mai, Thailand), 2) illustrating the system response using the damaged area as a function of floodwater levels and protection measures, 3) determining recovery thresholds based on land use and system functionality, and 4) quantifying robustness through the application of edge- and node-betweenness centrality models. Various quantifiable indicators of transportation robustness can be revealed; not only flood-damaged areas commonly considered in flood-risk management and spatial planning, but also the numbers of affected traffic links, nodes, and cars are highly valuable for transportation planning in achieving sustainable flood-resilient transportation systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1595
Author(s):  
Valeria Todeschi ◽  
Roberto Boghetti ◽  
Jérôme H. Kämpf ◽  
Guglielmina Mutani

Building energy-use models and tools can simulate and represent the distribution of energy consumption of buildings located in an urban area. The aim of these models is to simulate the energy performance of buildings at multiple temporal and spatial scales, taking into account both the building shape and the surrounding urban context. This paper investigates existing models by simulating the hourly space heating consumption of residential buildings in an urban environment. Existing bottom-up urban-energy models were applied to the city of Fribourg in order to evaluate the accuracy and flexibility of energy simulations. Two common energy-use models—a machine learning model and a GIS-based engineering model—were compared and evaluated against anonymized monitoring data. The study shows that the simulations were quite precise with an annual mean absolute percentage error of 12.8 and 19.3% for the machine learning and the GIS-based engineering model, respectively, on residential buildings built in different periods of construction. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis using the Morris method was carried out on the GIS-based engineering model in order to assess the impact of input variables on space heating consumption and to identify possible optimization opportunities of the existing model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8595
Author(s):  
Lindita Bande ◽  
Abeer Alshamsi ◽  
Anoud Alhefeiti ◽  
Sarah Alderei ◽  
Sebah Shaban ◽  
...  

The city of Al Ain (Abu Dhabi, UAE) has a mainly low rise residential buildings. Villas as part of a compound or separate units represent the majority of the residential areas in the city. Due to the harsh hot arid climate of Al Ain, the energy demand for the cooling load is quite high. Therefore, it is relevant finding new retrofit strategies that are efficient in reducing the cooling load of the villas. The aim of this study is to analyze one particular strategy (parametric shading structure) in terms of design, construction, cost, energy impact on the selected villa. The main data for this study is taken from the local sources. There are six steps followed in this analysis: case study analysis; climate analysis; parametric structure and PV panels; building energy consumption and outdoor thermal comfort; modelling, simulation, and validation; materials, construction, and cost evaluation. The model of the villa was validated for the full year 2020 based on the electricity bills obtained. After adding the parametric design structure, the reduction after shading is approximately 10%. Meanwhile the UTCI (Universal Thermal Climate Index) dropped from extreme heat stress to strong heat stress (average for the month of March and September). These findings are promising in the retrofit industry due to the advanced calculations used to optimize the parametric design structure.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Farina ◽  
Marco Maglionico ◽  
Marco Pollastri ◽  
Irena Stojkov

For most buildings considered to be of a public non-residential type there are insufficient published data to establish and compare the theoretical standards with actual consumption data. Therefore, water consumption per user in non-residential buildings is still a very complicated issue for engineers and designers involved in analysing water demand and water management. This is why linking water consumption and school occupancy is the goal of this paper, trying to set the basis for further design, conservation and educational interventions on this topic. This research integrates quantitative data of water consumption, through water metering and analysis, and historical data about users in buildings. We focused on consumptions for four types of schools: nurseries (0–3-year-old children), kindergartens (3–6 years), elementary schools (6–11 years) and secondary 1st grade schools (11–14 years). The results are that the rational basic demand for water is estimated as 48.8 l per pre-school student per day and 18.7 l per elementary/secondary school student per day. Therefore we found that younger children use more water on a daily basis than older ones, probably because they need more services, such as laundries and kitchens, whereas older students consume water mainly in restrooms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-244
Author(s):  
Joseph L. Richmond, LPD, MPA

Objective: On May 22, 2011, an EF-5 tornado struck Joplin, Missouri, leaving behind 161 fatalities and $2.8 billion in economic impacts. This case study of the 2011 disaster was an attempt at determining if and how economic recovery occurred following the disaster through the lived experiences of government officials, local policymakers, and business officials. Design: Case study using in-depth, semistructured, one-on-one interviews and a qualitative design and analysis.Setting: Joplin, Missouri/2011 Joplin Tornado Participants: Seven local government officials, policymakers, and business officials from the city of Joplin that were directly involved in the response and recovery from the 2011 tornado.Interventions: N/AMain outcome measure(s): N/AResults: Policies and actions that were the most effective focused on housing, personal financial resources of the survivors, and ensuring that the recovery processes were expedited as much as prudently possible.Conclusions: Specific policy measures are not recommended through the un-generalizable findings of this case study; however, this case study places a foundation for future research to develop specific policy measures related to disaster recovery.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (20) ◽  
pp. 7353
Author(s):  
Sang Whan Han

When an earthquake occurs, it causes great damage to a large area. Although seismic engineering continues to develop, it is reported that recently occurred earthquakes inflicted major damage to various structures and loss of human lives. Such earthquake damage occurs in high seismic regions as well as low to moderate seismic regions. This special issue contains topics on newly developed technologies and methods for seismic performance evaluation and seismic design of building structures.


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