Benchmarking FEMA P-58 performance predictions against observed earthquake data – A preliminary evaluation for the Canterbury earthquake sequence

JW Baker, G Cremen, Sonia Giovinazzi, Erica Seville

2016 New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE Conference

Abstract

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States has produced the P-58 guidelines for seismic performance assessment of buildings. This Performance-Based Seismic Assessment procedure aims to quantify earthquake ground shaking, structural demands, component damage and resulting consequences in a logical framework in order to facilitate risk assessment and decision making by a number of stakeholders. The 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence, and the resulting extensive data sets regarding damaged buildings that were collected, provide a unique opportunity to exercise and evaluate the P-58 guidelines. This paper provides an overview of the authors’ methodology to perform such an evaluation, and presents preliminary results from the calculations. Much work remains to critically evaluate these results and to broaden the scope of buildings studied and of impacts predicted. This paper documents some of the key approaches and data sources that will facilitate these next steps.

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