This SEAOC Blue Book: Seismic Design Recommendations is the premier publication of the SEAOC Seismology Committee. The name Blue Book is renowned worldwide among engineers, researchers, and building officials. Since 1959, the SEAOC Blue Book, previously titled Recommended Lateral Force Requirements and Commentary, has been a prescient publication of earthquake engineering. The Blue Book has been at the vanguard of earthquake engineering in California and around the world. This edition of the Blue Books offers a series of articles, that cover specific topics, some related to a particular code provision and some more general relating to an area of practice. While different than the previous editions of the Blue Books, it builds upon the tremendous effort of those who have forged earthquake engineering practice via the previous half-century of Blue Book editions. The Blue Book provides: insight and discussion of earthquake engineering concepts; interpretations of sometimes ambiguous or conflicting provisions of various codes, standards, and guidelines; and practical guidance on design implementation.

The Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) handbook can be used by trained personnel to identify, inventory, and screen buildings that are potentially seismically vulnerable. The RVS procedure comprises a method and several forms that help users to quickly identify, inventory, and score buildings according to their risk of collapse if hit by major earthquakes. The RVS handbook describes how to identify the structural type and key weakness characteristics, how to complete the screening forms, and how to manage a successful RVS program.

Performance-Based Seismic Design (PBSD) is a structural design methodology that has become more common in urban centers around the world, particularly for the design of high-rise buildings. The primary benefit of PBSD is that it substantiates exceptions to prescribed code requirements, such as height limits applied to specific structural systems, and allows project teams to demonstrate higher performance levels for structures during a seismic event.However, the methodology also involves significantly more effort in the analysis and design stages, with verification of building performance required at multiple seismic demand levels using Nonlinear Response History Analysis (NRHA). The design process also requires substantial knowledge of overall building performance and analytical modeling, in order to proportion and detail structural systems to meet specific performance objectives.This CTBUH Technical Guide provides structural engineers, developers, and contractors with a general understanding of the PBSD process by presenting case studies that demonstrate the issues commonly encountered when using the methodology, along with their corresponding solutions. The guide also provides references to the latest industry guidelines, as applied in the western United States, with the goal of disseminating these methods to an international audience for the advancement and expansion of PBSD principles worldwide.

The United States will certainly be subject to damaging earthquakes in the future. Some of these earthquakes will occur in highly populated and vulnerable areas. Coping with moderate earthquakes is not a reliable indicator of preparedness for a major earthquake in a populated area. The recent, disastrous, magnitude-9 earthquake that struck northern Japan demonstrates the threat that earthquakes pose. Moreover, the cascading nature of impacts-the earthquake causing a tsunami, cutting electrical power supplies, and stopping the pumps needed to cool nuclear reactors-demonstrates the potential complexity of an earthquake disaster. Such compound disasters can strike any earthquake-prone populated area. National Earthquake Resilience presents a roadmap for increasing our national resilience to earthquakes. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) is the multi-agency program mandated by Congress to undertake activities to reduce the effects of future earthquakes in the United States. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-the lead NEHRP agency-commissioned the National Research Council (NRC) to develop a roadmap for earthquake hazard and risk reduction in the United States that would be based on the goals and objectives for achieving national earthquake resilience described in the 2008 NEHRP Strategic Plan. National Earthquake Resilience does this by assessing the activities and costs that would be required for the nation to achieve earthquake resilience in 20 years. National Earthquake Resilience interprets resilience broadly to incorporate engineering/science (physical), social/economic (behavioral), and institutional (governing) dimensions. Resilience encompasses both pre-disaster preparedness activities and post-disaster response. In combination, these will enhance the robustness of communities in all earthquake-vulnerable regions of our nation so that they can function adequately following damaging earthquakes. While National Earthquake Resilience is written primarily for the NEHRP, it also speaks to a broader audience of policy makers, earth scientists, and emergency managers.