NEHRP Clearinghouse
- Title
- Action Plan for Performance Based Seismic Design: Executive Summary.
- File
- PB2009106862.pdf
- Source
- Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, DC., April 2000, 81 p.
- Abstract
- One of the primary goals of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the prevention, or mitigation, of this country's losses from natural hazards. To achieve this goal, we as a nation need to ask what level of performance do we expect from our buildings during an event such as an earthquake. Inorder to answer this question, FEMA is exploring the possible development of 'performance-based seismic design' criteria. Such criteria could be voluntarily used by this nation's engineers and designers to improve the performance of critical classes of buildings that are currently only designed to a 'lifesafety' level to avoid collapse, but would infact probably still suffer significant damage in a design event. FEMA contracted with the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) (contract number EMW-92-K-3955, Task 13) to solicit the input of the nation's leading seismic professionals in developing an action plan that could be used to develop performance- based seismic design criteria. This project and the resulting action plan have gone a long way in identifying key issues that will need to be addressed in this process.
- Keywords
- Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); Seismic design; Natural disasters; Lifesafety levels; Action plans; Buildings; Earthquake engineering; Performance-based seismic design criteria; Building codes; Structural analysis