RAPID/Collaborative Research: Investigation of Reinforced Concrete Buildings Damaged in the Magnitude 6.4 Southern Taiwan Earthquake of February 2016

2016年2月5日，台湾南部台南市附近发生6.4级地震，造成中低层钢筋混凝土建筑物严重受损、部分倒塌和全面倒塌。 虽然地面运动强度的措施将表明中度结构破坏，但据报道，由于地震，有10座钢筋混凝土建筑物倒塌，数百座建筑物受到严重破坏。这种破坏令人惊讶，因为台湾在地震研究、法规、执法和加强方面投入了大量资金。为了了解钢筋混凝土建筑性能的这种差异，快速反应研究基金（RAPID）将资助一个美国研究人员团队前往台湾，与台湾研究人员合作收集详细的建筑反应数据，包括观察到的建筑结构的损坏和属性。 将对受损和未受损的建筑物进行调查，以产生一个全面的数据集，用于检验关于损坏原因的假设。该数据集将用于：（1）了解建筑物倒塌的原因，（2）确定增加结构损坏概率的建筑物属性，（3）确定地震区的脆弱结构，特别是在现代抗震设计规范之前建造的旧结构，以及（4）研究现场反应和建筑物损坏的关系。 由于台湾采用了与美国类似的抗震设计方法，因此该数据集也将有助于提高对美国钢筋混凝土建筑物地震易损性的了解。美国研究小组将与台湾国家地震工程研究中心和国立成功大学的研究人员合作，收集受地震影响的100至150座建筑物的数据。 对于每一个被调查的建筑物，收集的信息将包括：结构损坏、岩土损坏、结构配置、关键尺寸、建筑图纸、用于设计的建筑规范年份、材料特性，对于选定的建筑物，收集高分辨率图像序列，以生成数字损坏图，用于明确量化损坏和性能。 该小组将打破惯例，调查受损和未受损的建筑物，以及经过改造的建筑物。该项目将产生一个全面的数据集，包括地面运动信息（台湾拥有世界上最大的加速度计网络之一），岩土工程信息，结构信息和观测性能。 该数据集将有助于对特定建筑物和场地进行详细的工程研究。 总的来说，数据集将成为一个“试验台”，以：（1）评价用于评估建筑物脆弱性，包括倒塌脆弱性的最新方法，（2）制定新的损坏指标，用于快速筛查已建成的基础设施，（3）评价改造战略的有效性。数据集将被存档在DesignSafe-CI.org网站上的数据存储库中，供美国、台湾和其他国家的研究人员、教育工作者和工程实践界广泛使用。 该项目还将对研究生进行地震后现场数据收集和数据存档及管理方面的培训。

The magnitude 6.4 southern Taiwan earthquake occurred near the city of Tainan, Taiwan, on February 5, 2016, causing severe damage, partial collapse, and full collapse of low-to-midrise reinforced concrete buildings. While the measures of ground motion intensity would have indicated moderate structural damage, instead ten reinforced concrete buildings collapsed and hundreds more have been reported to have severe damage as a consequence of the earthquake. This damage was surprising because Taiwan has made considerable investments into earthquake research, regulations, enforcement, and strengthening. To understand this discrepancy in reinforced concrete building performance, this Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) will fund a team of researchers from the United States to travel to Taiwan to work with Taiwanese researchers to gather detailed building response data, including the observed damage and properties of building structures in quantifiable terms. Both damaged and undamaged buildings will be surveyed to produce a comprehensive data set that can be used to test hypotheses on causes of damage. The data set will be used to: (1) understand causes of building collapse, (2) identify building properties that increase probability of structural damage, (3) identify vulnerable structures in seismic areas, in particular older structures built prior to modern seismic design codes, and (4) study the relationship of the site response and building damage. Because Taiwan has adopted seismic design methodologies similar to those in the United States, this data set also will help improve understanding of the seismic vulnerability of reinforced concrete buildings in the United States. The U.S. team will work with researchers from Taiwan's National Center for Research in Earthquake Engineering and National Cheng Kung University to gather data from 100 to 150 buildings affected by this earthquake. For each surveyed building, collected information will include: structural damage, geotechnical damage, structural configuration, key dimensions, building drawings, year of building code used for design, material properties, and for selected buildings, high-resolution image sequences to produce digital damage maps that can be used to quantify damage and performance in clear terms. Breaking with common practice, the team will survey both damaged and undamaged buildings, as well as retrofitted buildings. The project will produce a comprehensive data set, including information on ground motion (Taiwan has one of the densest networks of accelerometers in the world), geotechnical information, structural information, and observed performance. The data set will enable detailed engineering studies of specific buildings and sites. In total, the data set will form a "testbed" to: (1) evaluate state-of-the-art methodologies used to evaluate building vulnerability, including vulnerability to collapse, (2) develop new damage indicators for rapid screening of the built infrastructure, and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of retrofit strategies. The data set will be archived in the data repository on the DesignSafe-CI.org web site for broad use by researchers, educators, and the practicing engineering community in the United States, Taiwan, and other countries. This project will also train graduate students in post-earthquake field data collection and data archiving and curation.