Probabilistic Seismic Demand Assessment of Steel Moment-Resisting Frame Buildings with Ordinary and Essential Occupancy Uses

In the perspective of disaster-resilient communities, the essential buildings should be able to play an important role with limited damage for civil protection during and after natural hazards. However, this type of buildings may exhibit extensive damage of their structural and non-structural components. In this regard, there has been an increasing need for the accurate quantification of the earthquake performance of essential buildings in order to minimize societal and economic losses due to injuries, casualties, business disruption, etc. This paper aims to quantify the expected earthquake performance of higher risk steel frame buildings through collapse risk over their lifetime and seismic demand hazard. These buildings are designed for high-seismic regions on the West Coast of the United States following current seismic provisions. The expected earthquake performance is computed using the second-generation performance-based seismic risk evaluation. The collapse risk varies significantly, according to the employed design procedure; the collapse risks over a lifetime of essential buildings designed as per enhanced seismic design requirements are decreased by a factor of about 3, relative to counterparts of the same risk category buildings. The effect of employed seismic design procedure on the nonlinear demands of the buildings under severe earthquake shakings is significant.