The Bled workshops have traditionally produced reference documents providing visions for the future development of earthquake engineering as foreseen by leading researchers in the field. The participants of the 2011 workshop built on the tradition of these events initiated by Professors Fajfar and Krawinkler to honor their important research contributions and have now produced a book providing answers to crucial questions in today’s earthquake engineering: “What visible changes in the desi...

Why do volcanoes and earthquakes happen? Is Earth throwing a tantrum? Let your child decode the answers for these on his/her own through this interactive educational book. Composed of pictures that allow for the understanding of geology and vulcanology, this is a great resource that would complement the heavy school textbooks. Grab a copy now!

The classic account of how volcanism has shaped human culture and science, from the Bronze Age eruption that destroyed Minoan Crete to Mount St. HelensWhen the volcano Tambora erupted in Indonesia in 1815, as many as one hundred thousand people perished from the blast and ensuing famine. Gases and dust particles ejected into the atmosphere changed weather patterns around the world, resulting in the infamous “year without a summer” in North America, food riots in Eu...

This book offers an in-depth analysis and interpretation methods applicable to mine-induced seismicity. It is based on over 40 years of experience in mine and exploration geophysics. Another unique feature of this book is the complete history of the caving process as evidenced by the recorded seismicity at the South African copper mine Palabora Lift 1. Until now, the literature has only presented theory and case studies discussing the interpretation of results, and there has been no discus...

This book illustrates how mine seismology can be used to improve underground safety standards. It describes several preventive actions that have been put into practice at the 5B Area of No. 5 Shaft Vaal Reefs gold mine after issuing seismic warnings. These included additional safety pillars, changes in mining sequences and directions, and a review of the mining strategy for the entire 5B area.The presented experiment with seismic warning concept was a success because it was an inte...

This book offers a broad perspective on important topics in earthquake geotechnical engineering and gives specialists and those that are involved with research and application a more comprehensive understanding about the various topics. Consisting of eighteen chapters written by authors from the most seismic active regions of the world, such as USA, Japan, Canada, Chile, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Taiwan, and Turkey, the book reflects different views concerning how to assess and minimize ear...

Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics, as well as their interface with Engineering Seismology, Geophysics and Seismology, have all made remarkable progress over the past 15 years, mainly due to the development of instrumented large scale experimental facilities, to the increase in the quantity and quality of recorded earthquake data, to the numerous well-documented case studies from recent strong earthquakes as well as enhanced computer capabilities. One of the major factor...

Current knowledge and state-of-the-art developments in topics related to the seismic performance and risk assessment of different types of structures and building stock are addressed in the book, with emphasis on probabilistic methods. The first part addresses the global risk components, as well as seismic hazard and ground motions, whereas the second, more extensive part presents recent advances in methods and tools for the seismic performance and risk assessment of structures. The book c...

Fragility functions constitute an emerging tool for the probabilistic seismic risk assessment of buildings, infrastructures and lifeline systems. The work presented in this book is a partial product of a European Union funded research project SYNER-G (FP7 Theme 6: Environment) where existing knowledge has been reviewed in order to extract the most appropriate fragility functions for the vulnerability analysis and loss estimation of the majority of structures and civil works exposed to eart...

This book aims to serve as an essential reference to facilitate civil engineers involved in the design of new conventional (ordinary) reinforced concrete (R/C) buildings regulatedby the current European EC8 (EN 1998-1:2004) and EC2 (EN 1992-1-1:2004) codesof practice. The book provides unique step-by-step flowcharts which take the readerthrough all the required operations, calculations, and verification checks prescribed bythe EC8 provisions. These flowchart...

SYNER-G, a multidisciplinary effort funded by the European Union, allowed the development of an innovative methodological framework for the assessment of physical as well as socio-economic seismic vulnerability and risk at urban and regional level. The results of SYNER-G are presented in two books both published by Springer, the present and a second one, entitled “SYNER-G: Typology Definition and Fragility Functions for Physical Elements at Seismic Risk: Buildings, Lifelines, Transportatio...

Pseudo-static analysis is still the most-used method to assess the stability of geotechnical systems that are exposed to earthquake forces. However, this method does not provide any information about the deformations and permanent displacements induced by seismic activity. Moreover, it is questionable to use this approach when geotechnical systems are affected by frequent and rare seismic events. Incidentally, the peak ground acceleration has increased from 0.2-0.3 g in the seventies to th...