Seminar: Seismic Performance and Post-Earthquake Resilience of Highway Systems

Date: Thursday, July 23, 2009
Time: 2:00-3:30PM
Place: PEER Center Conference Room (325 Davis Hall)

Topic: Seismic Performance and Post-Earthquake Resilience of Highway Systems
Speaker: Stu Werner, Seismic Systems & Engineering Consultants

Abstract: Protection of life safety is no longer the sole requirement for the successful seismic design of bridges and other highway structures. Design to maintain acceptable highway-system performance and resilience that reduces post-earthquake traffic disruptions and ensures rapid restoration of system-wide traffic flows is also vital for facilitating emergency response, reducing economic losses, and reducing societal impacts of earthquake damage.

To address this issue, the FHWA has sponsored multi-year research to develop a new methodology (named REDARS) for deterministic or probabilistic seismic risk analysis of highway systems nationwide. This seminar will describe this methodology, provide a demonstration application of the methodology to the Los Angeles highway system, summarize new improvements to the methodology that are now being developed, and discuss directions for its continued development in the future.

2009-07-15 Werner Seminar Abstract and Bio (PDF file - 40 KB)