I-Corps: Creation of State-of-the-Art Software for Seismic Building Damage and Monetary Loss Analysis

美国建筑法规在地震期间保护生命安全方面非常成功，但它们的目的不是防止损坏和高昂的维修费用。尽管社会关注未来地震后的经济破坏，但在结构设计过程中几乎从未分析过建筑物对损坏的敏感性。这给我们留下了一个建筑存量，容易受到破坏，金钱损失，并可能在地震后关闭。 这个I-Corps团队的研究活动和长期愿景侧重于使工程师能够在建筑设计过程中考虑减少损坏/损失。该团队的计划是创建一个商业软件工具，使工程师能够预测地震破坏和损失，作为设计过程的一部分。这种设计方法对许多工程师来说都是新的，因此该工具还将提供可能的最大损失（PML）分析结果（工程师习惯于为抵押贷款行业做这些）。如果成功，这种新的设计方法和支持软件工具可能会彻底改变地震区建筑物的设计方式。具体来说，这个软件工具（以及工具中实现的理论）将使工程师更清楚地了解建筑物在地震中受损的程度，并提供修复建筑物的估计费用;这将使工程师能够以减少地震破坏和维修成本的方式设计建筑物，而不是沿用现时的做法，只以保障楼宇住客的生命安全为设计目标。

United States building codes have been very successful in protecting life safety during earthquakes, but they do not aim to protect against damage and high repair costs. Despite societal concerns over economic disruption after a future earthquake, a building's susceptibility to damage is almost never analyzed during the structural design process. This leaves us with a building stock that is vulnerable to damage, monetary loss, and possible closure after an earthquake. This I-Corps team's research activities and long-term vision focus on enabling engineers to consider damage/loss reduction in the building design process. The team's plan is to create a commercial software tool that enables engineers to predict seismic damage and loss as part of the design process. This design approach will be new to many engineers, so the tool will be created to also provide Probable Maximum Loss (PML) analyses results (which engineers are accustomed to doing for the mortgage industry). If successful, this new design approach and the enabling software tool could revolutionize the way that buildings are designed in seismic areas. Specifically, this software tool (and the theory implemented in the tool) will give engineers a clearer understanding of the extent to which buildings will be damaged in earthquakes and provide an estimate of the cost to repair the buildings; this will enable engineers to design buildings in such a way as to reduce the seismic damage and repair costs, instead of using the current approach of only designing buildings to protect the life safety of building occupants.