Proceedings of the U.S.-Italian Workshop on Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit

Recent experience in both Italy and the United States has drawn attention to the need for improved methods of seismic evaluation and retrofitting. This volume offers the proceedings of a joint US-Italy workshop on these topics. The purposes of this bilateral workshop were: 1) to discuss common technical problems; 2) to identify research gaps, needs, and implementation issues; 3) to project trends for future seismic codes; and 4) to consider technology transfer and future collaborative research. The emphasis of the meeting was on basic issues for doing and implementing research rather than on the presentation of research per se. Twelve state-of-the-art papers were presented at the workshop and focused on such general issues as the influence of research on practice, hurdles to the implementation of the next generation of codes, and finally, research needs likely to emerge in the next decade as a result of technological advancement. Each paper is individually included in the QUAKELINE database. Discussion at the workshop resulted in a series of resolutions included in this volume. Both resolution and state-of-the-art papers may be grouped into the following categories: ground motion modeling, computational modeling, evaluation and retrofit research, vulnerability studies and future actions.