Summary In classical earthquake risk assessment, the human behavior is actually not taken into account in risk assessment. Agent‐based modeling is a simulation technique that has been applied recently in several fields, such as emergency evacuation. The paper is proposing a methodology that includes in agent‐based models the human behavior, considering the anxiety effects generated by the crowd and their influence on the evacuation delays. The proposed model is able to take into account the interdependency between the earthquake evacuation process, and the corresponding damage of structural and non‐structural components that is expressed in term of fragility curves. The software REPAST HPC has been used to implement the model, and as a case study, the earthquake evacuation by a mall located in Oakland has been used. The human behavior model has been calibrated through a survey using a miscellaneous sample from different countries. The model can be used to test future scenarios and help local authorities in situations where the human behavior plays a key role. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Recent gas production tests at the Nankai Trough in Japan show that sand production issue caused premature termination of the gas production test [6], [11].Earlier attempts to investigate well integrity in methane hydrate-bearing formation were documented in Freij-Ayoub et al. [12], [13] where they assessed well integrity during heating-induced hydrate dissociation. However, well integrity during reservoir compaction, which might be the cause of the well failure/sand production at the Nankai Trough, was not assessed in their study. Subsequently, well integrity in methane hydrate reservoirs during reservoir compaction was investigated by several researchers ([14], [8], [15] and [9]).Rutqvist et al. [14] showed that the gap between the casing and formation, which developed during well construction (e.g., poor cement job) would adversely affect formation integrity around a horizontal well during gas production. Their work indicates the importance of simulating the well construction processes for the assessment of wellbore integrity during gas production. Qiu et al. [8] simulated 20-day gas production at the Nankai Trough and showed that the casing, cement and screen could accumulate approximately 1% of plastic strain, which they argue would be negligibly small to cause well ' . The effect of different initial horizontal effective stress distributions is investigated in Section 3.5.

Previous studies conclude that additional capacities of isolation system are needed beyond minimum demand required in minimum design loads for buildings and other structures (ASCE 7) to achieve the targeted level of reliability for seismically isolated structures. To implement this concept for practical design, a probabilistic design method with minor computational cost is proposed to obtain the isolation system capacities based on the targeted failure fragility. As an essential statistical parameter for determining the fragility curve shape, total system uncertainty value ( βTOT) is needed. Among different sources of βTOT, the record to record uncertainty ( βRTR) contributes most to the isolator deformation demand and is challenging to obtain for a specific design case. A simplified procedure with minor computational cost has been proposed for estimating βRTR when failure is governed by the isolators. Main assumptions and simplifications in the proposed design method have been investigated and justified. Finally, a step-by-step procedure for implementing the proposed probabilistic design method has been introduced. A design example was given, and the three-dimensional incremental dynamic analysis was performed to validate the design method.

Vehicles of all types are increasingly being used as a hostile threat in public and urban environments. While vehicle barriers have been designed, manufactured, and installed for highsecurity applications in the government, military, and energy sectors, there is a growing need to provide hostile vehicle mitigation for commercial property. Though there are many suppliers of vehicle barriers in the U.S. and abroad, impact test certification is typically only applicable to a single configuration. Oftentimes there are site constraints that prevent barrier installation in the tested configuration. One specific and common variance that arises is the use of surface-mounted barrier systems installed atop an existing, elevated structural slab. Though the need for a deep foundation is avoided with this barrier type, there remains a strong assumption that the barrier is continuously supported by the soil beneath. When barriers are mounted above basements or in parking structures, the existing structural slab is vulnerable to failure from vehicle impact loads and providing an anchorage design can be challenging. The aim of this case study is to evaluate the performance of typical elevated, reinforced-concrete slabs for surface-mounted vehicle barrier designs currently available for procurement. Finite element analysis is employed to assess the load transfer to and behavior of the slab and anchorage in the event of an impact. Key implications and design challenges are documented.