The Program Plan for the Development of Collapse Assessment and Mitigation Strategies for Existing Reinforced Concrete Buildings was produced under contract to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), by the NEHRP Consultants Joint Venture, a joint venture of ATC and the Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE). (Published 2010, 100 pages)
ABSTRACT: Reinforced concrete buildings designed and constructed prior to the introduction of seismic design provisions for ductile response (commonly referred to as nonductile concrete buildings) represent one of the largest seismic safety concerns in the United States and the world.æ The need for improvement in collapse assessment technology for existing nonductile concrete buildings has been recognized as a high-priority because: (1) such buildings represent a significant percentage of the vulnerable building stock across the United States; (2) failure of such buildings can involve total collapse, substantial loss of life, and significant economic loss; (3) at present, the ability to predict collapse thresholds for different types of older reinforced concrete buildings is limited; (4) recent research has focused on older West Coast concrete buildings; and, (5) full advantage has not yet been taken of past research products (ATC, 2003).
The National Science Foundation awarded a George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Grand Challenge project to the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center to develop comprehensive strategies for identifying seismically hazardous older concrete buildings, enable prediction of the collapse of such buildings, and to develop and promote cost-effective hazard mitigation strategies for them.æ Products from this important research effort are expected to soon be available, creating an opportunity for transferring past and present research results into design practice.
Recognizing this opportunity, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has initiated a multi-phase project with the primary objective being the development of nationally accepted guidelines for assessing and mitigating the risk of collapse in older nonductile concrete buildings This report summarizes efforts to define the scope and content of recommended guidance documents, the necessary analytical studies, and estimated schedule and budget needed for their development.
This task has been completed and produced the NIST GCR 10-917-7 report which may be ordered here in hard (printed) copy format.
View Title Page, Preface, and Contents on the "Downloadable" tab