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Berkeley Engineers: Changing Our World

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Gregory L. Fenves, chair of Berkeley's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Californians live with the risk of a major earthquake occurring at any moment. It's not a matter of if, but when. What if you could predict the damage before the ground begins to shake? UC Berkeley civil engineers are developing new large-scale computational simulations of ground motion and building response in urban regions to help understand and prepare for the inevitable. These simulations will enable building code requirements to be examined, improved, and tested. Meanwhile, citywide forecasts of damage patterns will help emergency response teams plan for the big one.

"The goal is to use powerful computers to paint a rational picture of the impact of various magnitude earthquakes on entire regions rather than individual buildings," says principal investigator Gregory L. Fenves, chair of Berkeley 's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "This will be a laboratory for what-if scenarios."

The Seismic Performance for Urban Regions (SPUR) effort is a National Science Foundation-funded joint project between UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, Mississippi State University, and UC Irvine. At Berkeley, Fenves is collaborating with professor Bozidar Stojadinovic under the auspices of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). Fenves will discuss SPUR at the upcoming Berkeley in Silicon Valley symposium on April 24.

The SPUR system works by integrating data about earthquake ground motion with computers models of real buildings in a particular urban region. The first experiments are designed to shake up a virtual cityscape of Los Angeles.

"Los Angeles has an extensive system of faults and there's more detailed geophysical data available than anywhere else in the world," Fenves says. "It also has a variety of building construction types, including some very hazardous structures."

This still from a simulation shows the pattern of an earthquake as it begins in the upper right of the image and moves across the city. The tall rectangles represent skyscrapers responding to the ground motion. (courtesy the researchers)

Currently, the simulation is populated with hundreds of thousands of building models that represent the various classes of construction found in Los Angeles, from steel moment resisting frames to reinforced concrete buildings. Eventually, actual building inventories from city records along with residential construction models will increase the realism of the simulations, Fenves says.

"Perhaps in the future, if you'd like to improve a major building you might be required to submit a computer model to the city that can be plugged into a system like this one," he says.

Once the simulation is loaded with building data, a quake is triggered with the press of a button. The researchers can then literally look at the pattern of damage across the entire region.

This still frame from a SPUR visualization depicts the motion of tall buildings in a magnitude 6 earthquake. The visualization was generated by UC Irvine professor Joerg Meyer based on a building simulation from UC Berkeley researchers. (courtesy the researchers) [High-resolution image]

The SPUR simulations are valuable both before and after a city is rocked by a quake. For example, building codes are designed to save lives but building performance is not methodically tested. Simulations will enable policy-makers to determine the cost/benefit ratio of altering the code before actually going through with it.

"The codes already do a good job of protecting human lives," Fenves says. "But the real cost of earthquakes in populated regions like Los Angeles is an economic one."

Indeed, a recent FEMA study estimated the loss of buildings due to earthquakes exceeds $4 billion in direct costs. The losses from a single quake in California could exceed $200 billion.

"This type of simulation technology will eventually allow us to look at the monetary impact of an earthquake on an entire urban system," Fenves says. "Will the power plants function? Will the transportation infrastructure continue to work?"

Along with guiding urban planners and building codes, knowing what will happen in an earthquake before it happens will provide disaster response teams with a much-needed leg up. The SPUR simulations highlight zones where damage is expected to be the most severe.

"Pre-event planning becomes possible," Fenves says. "You might want to forward-deploy materials, prioritize response, or allocate resources like heavy equipment."

In what ways would you like to use simulation technology? We want to hear from you...

In the long-term, the researchers envision response teams running near real-time simulations, based on actual earthquake data, in the hectic period immediately following a quake. That way, teams and resources can be directed to where they're most needed before the actual damage reports begin to flow in.

Recently, the researchers have proposed to enhance their simulations using data from remote sensors. For instance, specific information in city tax records about the construction of individual buildings could be layered with satellite images of a region's physical properties. The result would be a much more accurate simulation of the locale under study. According to Fenves, this kind of satellite reconnaissance could be used to simulate the impact of earthquakes on developing nations where there is a lack of building records.

"Someday, citizens in seismically active regions could log on to a Web site, pick a scenario, and see how their block would fare in an earthquake," Fenves says.

Gregory L. Fenves home page

Bozidar Stojadinovic's home page

Seismic Performance for Urban Regions (SPUR)

Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS)

Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER)

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© 2004 UC Regents. Updated 3/22/04.