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Chapter 6
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Earthquake engineering has been one of the most rapidly evolving areas of
structural engineering practice during the past 40 years. Extensive research and
development has occurred at major universities and new technologies have been
rapidly adopted into engineering practice. The NEHRP Recommended Seismic
Provisions plays an essential role in this process by serving as the effective bridge
between academic research and practical criteria that can be adopted into the
model building codes and standards. This chapter identifies important areas of
future development, some of which are introduced in Part 3 of the Provisions and
are likely to become requirements in future editions of the Provisions.
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frames. Building officials require guidance as to when such products can safely
be accepted as equivalents to elements that are designed and constructed in ac-
cordance with the requirements of the Provisions. To satisfy this need, FEMA
recently funded the development of a simplified component-based comparative
procedure that is described in Quantification of Building Seismic Performance
Factors: Component Equivalency Methodology, FEMA P-795.
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EARTHQUAKE-RESISTANT DESIGN CONCEPTS
performance and it is not clear to designers how these criteria should be changed
in order to provide buildings and structures with different performance capabili-
ties. Further, because these design procedures do not include actual evaluations
of a building’s performance capability, many buildings designed in conformance
with the Provisions may not actually be capable of attaining the desired perfor-
mance. Performance-based design procedures are an alternative to the prescrip-
tive approaches contained in the Provisions that enable engineers to directly
consider a building’s probable performance as they perform the design and to
tailor the design to attain specific desired performance. These procedures can
allow more reliable, and sometimes more economical, attainment of the perfor-
mance intended by the Provisions and also can allow buildings to be designed for
superior performance.
Over the past 20 years, the earthquake engineering community has been engaged
in the development of performance-based procedures directly focused on provid-
ing existing buildings with the capability to deliver specific levels or types of de-
sired performance. The ASCE/SEI 31 and ASCE/SEI 41 standards that evolved from
earlier FEMA-funded studies and products (FEMA 310 and FEMA 356, respec-
tively) provide criteria for the evaluation and upgrading of existing buildings and
both represent a first generation of performance-based design criteria. FEMA now
is engaged in a major project with the Applied Technology Council to develop
the next-generation of performance-based design criteria. These next generation
criteria will enable engineers to more reliably design and upgrade buildings to
achieve specific levels of performance as measured by the probable casualties and
economic and occupancy losses that may result from future earthquakes.
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