Yuji Ishiyama

A Proposal for a Comprehensive Approach to Safer Non-engineered Houses

Abstract Reducing earthquake disasters in non-engineered houses is an acute issue because they are a main cause of human casualties worldwide. Since non-engineered houses differ from engineered houses in many respects, the authors conducted a comparative study and clarified the characteristics of the former. Based on this study, they found that reducing disasters in non-engineered houses would require appropriate seismic technologies to be adopted by communities and effective channels to disseminate technical knowledge. Further, a comprehensive approach covering a wider field of activity and effort was found to be necessary as users/dwellers of non-engineered houses are low/middle-income people and a professional housing supply sector usually does not exist for such houses. This paper reports on the characteristics of non-engineered houses, indicates the items to be tackled in reducing earthquake disasters in such dwellings, and proposes an approach to safer non-engineered houses consisting of key issues and a comprehensive approach.

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON CONFINED MASONRY STRUCTURE FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY DESIGN-Full scale shaking table test and cyclic loading test-:- Full scale shaking table test and cyclic loading test -

The safety of Non-Engineered Construction is one of most urgent issues, because it is main cause of human casualties. Building Research Institute (BRI) and partner institute both in Japan and abroad have been working on safer housing since 2005. Various research and studies for Non-Engineered construction Activities have been conducted towards achieving safer structures. The confined masonry becomes common structure in earthquake prone area recently. This experimental study on confined masonry was conducted through full scale shaking table test in Japan and Peru. This study aims to better understanding the behavior under earthquake, and research for feasible and affordable seismic construction in earthquake prone area.

ACTUAL CONCRETE STRENGTH AND SEISMIC DAMAGE PREDICTION OF EXISTING REINFORCED CONCRETE BUILDINGS IN HOKKAIDO BASED ON SEISMIC DIAGNOSIS

In this paper, we investigate the seismic performance of existing reinforced concrete buildings, the damage prediction and the actual concrete strength based on the seismic diagnosis results from 1996 to 2006 in Hokkaido. The following conclusions are obtained: (1) 79% of buildings built before 1971 do not satisfy the sesmic capacity index Is≥0.6; (2) The average ratio of actual concrete strength by core tests to design basis one is 1.39; (3) The seismic retrofit of buildings reduces the predicted seismic damage ratio over moderate damage rank to approximately one fourth as compared to the non-retrofit buildings under the earthquake ground motion level of JMA seismic intensity of 6.