Seismic Analysis of a Roadway System in the Los Angeles, California Area

Over the past several years, the Federal Highway Administration sponsored two multi-year research projects titled “Seismic Vulnerability of Existing Highway Construction” and “Seismic Vulnerability of the Highway System”, that were carried out through the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research. These projects included a task to enhance, develop, program, and apply new procedures for seismic risk analysis (SRA) of roadway systems. This task initially focused on developing the framework for a deterministic and probabilistic SRA methodology, which was named REDARS™ (an acronym for Risks from Earthquake DAmage to Roadway Systems). Based on this framework, the methodology was then applied to the roadway system in Shelby County, Tennessee, in order to demonstrate its application and to identify directions for further development (Werner et al., 2000). Following this, REDARS™ was independently validated, after which research to improve its models and to program its methodology was implemented. These latter efforts were also supported under a separate project that was sponsored by the California Department of Transportation in order to enable them to assess the applicability of REDARS™ 2 in their future statewide seismic-risk-reduction activities. The culmination of these multi-year activities was the development of a new software package named REDARS™ 2, which was released for public use during March, 2006. Reports have been prepared that describe the REDARS™ 2 methodology and software, a demonstration application of the software to the Los Angeles, California roadway system, and a REDARS™ 2 Import Wizard that greatly facilitates input-data preparation (Werner, et. al., 2006; Cho et al., 2006). This paper summarizes this research by reviewing the REDARS™ 2 SRA methodology, and then using results from the above demonstration application to illustrate how such results can facilitate performance-based engineering and seismic-risk-reduction decision making.

• Corporate Authors:

  Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research

  State University of New York, 107 Red Jacket Quadrangle, P.O. Box 610025
  Buffalo, NY  United States  14261-0025
• Authors:
  • Werner, Stuart D
  • Cho, Sungbin
  • Taylor, Craig E
  • Lavoie, Jean-Paul
  • Huyck, Charles K
• Conference:
  • Fifth National Seismic Conference on Bridges & Highways
  • Location: San Francisco CA, United States
  • Date: 2006-9-18 to 2006-9-20
• Publication Date: 2006

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: Fifth National Seismic Conference on Bridges and Highways: Innovation in Earthquake Engineering for Highway Structures

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Construction; Earthquake resistant design; Engineering; Highways; Methodology; Performance based specifications; Risk analysis; Roads; Software; Validation
• Identifier Terms: Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research; Redars (Computer program); U.S. Federal Highway Administration
• Uncontrolled Terms: Frameworks; Seismic analysis; Seismic vulnerability
• Geographic Terms: Los Angeles (California); Shelby County (Tennessee)
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Construction; Design; Geotechnology; Highways; I24: Design of Bridges and Retaining Walls; I42: Soil Mechanics;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01080772
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: A30
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Nov 15 2007 10:33AM