Real-Time Seismic Monitoring Needs of a Building Owner—and the Solution: A Cooperative Effort

Abstract

A recently implemented advanced seismic monitoring system for a 24-story building facilitates recording of accelerations and computing displacements and drift ratios in near-real time to measure the earthquake performance of the building. The drift ratio is related to the damage condition of the specific building. This system meets the owner's needs for rapid quantitative input to assessments and decisions on post-earthquake occupancy. The system is now successfully working and, in absence of strong shaking to date, is producing low-amplitude data in real time for routine analyses and assessment. Studies of such data to date indicate that the configured monitoring system with its building specific software can be a useful tool in rapid assessment of buildings and other structures following an earthquake. Such systems can be used for health monitoring of a building, for assessing performance-based design and analyses procedures, for long-term assessment of structural characteristics, and for long-term damage detection.

Revolutionising engineering education in the Middle East region to promote earthquake-disaster mitigation

“…Structural monitoring, protective systems, remote sensing and Web-based GIS are technologies that have been improved significantly through earthquake engineering applications. These technologies provide enormous benefits through improved surveillance and real-time management of critical infrastructure (Celebi et al 2004). For example, remote-sensing technologies and Web-based GIS originally developed for earthquake investigation were later applied in reconnaissance missions and response planning for Hurricane Charlie in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.…”

Method for detecting moment connection fracture using high-frequency transients in recorded accelerations

“…For example, under San Francisco's Building Occupancy Resumption Program, several building owners have extensively instrumented their buildings and set drift thresholds that enable the owner to take action (reoccupy, have engineer inspect, etc.) without waiting for inspection by the city building department [11].…”

Seismic damage detection of tall airport traffic control towers using wavelet analysis

“…These methods often employ neural networks as a pattern recognition tool, to relate ground motion indices to the structural damage indices. On the other hand, several studies have concentrated on the seismic damage identification of specific types of structures by using their dynamic characteristics (Celebi, Sanli, Sinclair, Gallant, & Radulescu, 2004;Moaveni, He, Conte, & Restrepo, 2010;Nakamura, Masri, Chassiakos, & Caughey, 1998;Vafaei, Adnan, & Yadollahi, 2011). These approaches make use of measured dynamic responses (response-based techniques) or modal parameters (vibration-based techniques) to identify seismic-induced damage.…”