AbstractsEngineering

Development of a GIS-based seismic hazard screening tool

by Andrew J. Wilding




Institution: Missouri University of Science and Technology
Department:
Year: 2008
Record ID: 1821753
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/10355/27357


Abstract

"Geotechnical earthquake engineering hazards have consequences that are difficult to mitigate, especially for infrastructure systems with multiple and distributed components. In the last few decades significant progress has been made to provide more accurate and useful methods to evaluate hazards for complex systems. One of these advances involves the application of spatial analysis and geographic information systems (GIS), for not only presenting data as maps, but also providing more practical and usable solutions, such as calculating the hazard potential with spatial distribution. This thesis studies the evaluation of geotechnical earthquake engineering hazards within a GIS environment, using borehole-specific data and seismic ground motions. Existing methods and applications used to evaluate these hazards, as well as existing geotechnical database formats are presented and discussed. This research developed a GIS methodology to be used as a "screening tool: to evaluate geotechnical earthquake engineering hazards from a database of borehole data and then display the results on a map" – Abstract, p. iii.