The contributions to this volume examine: geotechnical hazard acknowledging the deversity of local ground conditions and environmental factors which play a decisive role in designing engineering structures in Danubian countries.

Seismic hazard and risk analyses underpin the loadings prescribed by engineering design codes, the decisions by asset owners to retrofit structures, the pricing of insurance policies, and many other activities. This is a comprehensive overview of the principles and procedures behind seismic hazard and risk analysis. It enables readers to understand best practises and future research directions. Early chapters cover the essential elements and concepts of seismic hazard and risk analysis, while later chapters shift focus to more advanced topics. Each chapter includes worked examples and problem sets for which full solutions are provided online. Appendices provide relevant background in probability and statistics. Computer codes are also available online to help replicate specific calculations and demonstrate the implementation of various methods. This is a valuable reference for upper level students and practitioners in civil engineering, and earth scientists interested in engineering seismology.

Seismic behavior of the built environment is uncertain for a number of reasons, one of the most important of them is that surface ground motions are inherently variable. The aim of this book is to shed light on some of the variables that control much of this uncertainty, show a lower bound to this uncertainty by computing the statistics for sites (stations) that have recorded multiple earthquakes, and present the effects of plausible uncertainty reductions on the results of Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analyses (PSHA). This book shows that single-site uncertainty is considerably lower than ergodic type uncertainty, but it cannot be used in routine PSHA without some strong pre-conditions.

This report describes and summarizes a probabilistic evaluation of ground motions for the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL). The purpose of this evaluation is to provide a basis for updating the seismic design criteria for the INEL. In this study, site-specific seismic hazard curves were developed for seven facility sites as prescribed by DOE Standards 1022-93 and 1023-96. These sites include the: Advanced Test Reactor (ATR); Argonne National Laboratory West (ANL); Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (ICPP or CPP); Power Burst Facility (PBF); Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC); Naval Reactor Facility (NRF); and Test Area North (TAN). The results, probabilistic peak ground accelerations and uniform hazard spectra, contained in this report are not to be used for purposes of seismic design at INEL. A subsequent study will be performed to translate the results of this probabilistic seismic hazard analysis to site-specific seismic design values for the INEL as per the requirements of DOE Standard 1020-94. These site-specific seismic design values will be incorporated into the INEL Architectural and Engineering Standards.

This book presents a summary of the important outcomes of the SIGMA project related to all aspects of Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment: source characterization, rock motion characterization, site response characterization, and hazard calculations, with for all of them emphasis on the treatment of uncertainties. In recent years, attempts have been made to identify and quantify uncertainties in seismic hazard estimations for regions with moderate seismicity. These uncertainties, for which no estimation standards exist, create major difficulties and can lead to different interpretations and divergent opinions among experts. To address this matter, an international research project was launched in January 2011, by an industrial consortium composed of French and Italian organizations. This program, named SIGMA (Seismic Ground Motion Assessment) lasted for five years and involved a large number of international institutions. This book is intended for instructors running courses on engineering seismology, graduate students in the same field and practicing engineers involved in Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analyses.

This dissertation includes three major components. First, ratios between median values and the associated standard deviations for different definitions of the horizontal component of ground motions in Central and Eastern North America are developed using a subset of the NGA-East database. While the most recent studies produced similar results using different subsets of the NGA-West2 database, it is possible that such directionality results may differ for other earthquake datasets and be region specific. The computed median ratios are similar to the ratios provided in recent studies for other regions with a shift in some period ranges with noticeable differences between the standard deviations. Second, a comparison of a hybrid approach and a fully probabilistic approach for incorporating site effects into a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) is presented. In the employed hybrid approach the amplification factors are computed by performing equivalent linear site response analysis. The considered fully probabilistic approach is characterized by higher levels of sophistication in which the rock hazard is convolved with the probability density function of the amplification functions to calculate the surface ground motions. The uncertainties associated with the site characterization is addressed via Monte Carlo randomizations. To fulfill the scope of this study, the employed approaches is highlighted focusing on performing a site-specific PSHA for a Liquid Natural Gas tank located in the Gulf Coast region. Finally, a new ground motion prediction model is developed for the response spectral ratio of vertical-to-horizontal (V/H) components of earthquakes for the Gulf Coast region. The proposed V/H ratio model has the advantage of considering the magnitude, source to site distance, and the shear-wave velocity of soil deposits in the upper 30 m of the site (Vs30) for the peak ground acceleration (PGA), and a wide range of spectral periods. The model is based on a comprehensive set of regression analyses of the newly compiled NGA-East database of available recordings with the moment magnitudes M ≥ 3.4 and the rupture distances RRup