Calibration of Seismic Reliability Models

Summary

The calibration of theoretical seismic reliability models with respect to observations about response, damage and failure of structures subjected to earthquakes is presented. Reliability is described in terms of mean and variance of the maximum value reached during an earthquake by a behavior index such that a value greater than unity means failure. Qualitative observations about behavior of structures are transformed into conditional probability distributions of the behavior indeces of different structures, and a bayesian formulation is adopted for updating prior distributions of means and variances of those indeces in the light of uncertain observations about values taken by them in real structures responding to earthquakes.