Advances in Seismic Design Methodologies - Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design - page 393

Advances in Seismic Design Methodologies 393

Figure 9.1 Performance and damage levels (Gioncu and Mazzolani, 2002)

There is no direct way that engineers could design for such performance specifications,
such as for instance “a business interruption of 3 weeks”. Therefore, there is a need to
establish the corresponding relationships among the behavioral parameters, which are
meaningful for building owners and users respectively, and the reliability analysis for
the design professionals (Hamburger, 1996).
Under these conditions, another methodology for seismic design is developed. As
Figure 9.2 shows, there is a minimum level of protection demanded by society and
introduced in the codes in order to safeguard buildings against collapse endangering
human lives and to reduce economic losses at the minimum level. In the frame of