Seismic Risk Analysis of Iranian Construction Projects

Authors

1 Department of Engineering,University of Tehran

2 Department of Civil Engineering,Sharif University of Technology

3 Department of Engineering,University of South Australia

4 Department of Mechanical Engineering,University of Adelaide

Abstract

In this paper, the project earthquake occurrence risk coecient is determined for each
construction project that is located in one of Iran's twenty seismic regions. This coecient is allocated,
regardless of the current situation of the project, being in the plan or execution phase or even completed.
This coecient indicates the possibility of an earthquake occurrence during a project's life time. To nd
this coecient, the Gutenberg-Richter linear relationship has been applied, in conjunction with the Poisson
distribution. The Gutenberg-Richter linear equation expresses the relationship between the magnitude of
an earthquake and the number of occurrences, during a xed time, of that magnitude. To nd the linear
relationship for a series of earthquakes with di erent magnitudes occurring in the same seismic region,
the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) has been used. Two linear regression assumption violations, which
are variance heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation, have been tested on the available data. In the case
of nding one or both of these two violations, The Generalized Least Square (GLS) has been applied to
produce a better regression line. Moreover, the second order type of the Gutenberg-Richter relationship has
also been determined to validate the linear one. In conclusion, by application of the Poisson distribution
and by having the design earthquake's magnitude and project life time, the third parameter, which is the
design earthquake occurrence risk, can be determined for a given construction project in a speci c location
in Iran.

Keywords

Scientia Iranica
Volume 17, Issue 1 - Serial Number 1
Transactions on Civil Engineering (A)
February 2010

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics