Subject Overview

Advanced study of earthquake hazards, structural and geotechnical response, seismic analysis and design, performance assessment, retrofit, resilience, and contemporary digital practice for buildings and infrastructure.

Learning Goal

Enable learners to characterize seismic hazards, analyze dynamic response, design and assess earthquake-resistant systems, select mitigation strategies, and make ethical, code-compliant, risk-informed engineering decisions.

Syllabus

1. Earthquakes and Engineering Seismology

Learning Objective: Explain tectonics, faults, seismic waves, magnitude, intensity, source mechanisms, recurrence, and fundamental earthquake terminology.

Category: foundation

2. Seismic Hazard and Ground-Motion Characterization

Learning Objective: Apply deterministic and probabilistic seismic hazard analysis; interpret response spectra, attenuation models, records, site effects, microzonation, and ground-motion selection and scaling.

Category: core

3. Fundamentals of Structural Dynamics

Learning Objective: Model free, forced, and damped vibration of single- and multi-degree-of-freedom systems using modal properties, numerical integration, and response spectra.

Category: foundation

4. Earthquake Response and Seismic Analysis

Learning Objective: Perform equivalent-static, response-spectrum, modal, time-history, pushover, and nonlinear dynamic analyses while recognizing torsion, higher modes, damping, and modeling uncertainty.

Category: core

5. Seismic Design Philosophy and Codes

Learning Objective: Interpret force- and displacement-based design, ductility, capacity design, overstrength, redundancy, regularity, importance categories, load combinations, detailing rules, and international code frameworks.

Category: core

6. Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering

Learning Objective: Define performance objectives and limit states; connect hazard, demand, damage, loss, downtime, fragility, uncertainty, and acceptance criteria in performance-based assessment.

Category: advanced

7. Seismic Design of Reinforced-Concrete Structures

Learning Objective: Design ductile moment frames, shear walls, dual systems, diaphragms, joints, foundations, and reinforcement details; diagnose brittle mechanisms and construction deficiencies.

Category: application

8. Seismic Design of Steel, Composite, Timber, and Masonry Systems

Learning Objective: Evaluate and design braced and moment frames, connections, composite systems, timber structures, and reinforced or unreinforced masonry using material-specific ductility and failure principles.

Category: application

9. Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil–Structure Interaction

Learning Objective: Assess site response, liquefaction, cyclic soil behavior, lateral spreading, slope instability, seismic earth pressures, foundation response, and soil–structure interaction.

Category: core

10. Bridges, Lifelines, and Critical Infrastructure

Learning Objective: Analyze seismic behavior of bridges, dams, tunnels, pipelines, utilities, industrial facilities, and nonstructural systems, emphasizing continuity, functionality, and cascading risk.

Category: application

11. Existing Structures: Evaluation, Damage, and Retrofit

Learning Objective: Conduct rapid and detailed assessment; interpret failure evidence; apply vulnerability methods and select retrofit measures including jacketing, bracing, wall additions, foundation strengthening, and nonstructural restraint.

Category: application

12. Seismic Isolation, Energy Dissipation, and Advanced Protective Systems

Learning Objective: Design and evaluate base isolation, viscous and hysteretic dampers, tuned systems, rocking structures, and semi-active or smart-control technologies.

Category: advanced

13. Seismic Risk, Resilience, and Disaster Decision-Making

Learning Objective: Use fragility, vulnerability, loss, life-cycle cost, business-continuity, recovery, and resilience analytics to prioritize investments, emergency plans, portfolios, and community mitigation strategies.

Category: strategic

14. Digital Practice, AI, Governance, and Future Directions

Learning Objective: Apply BIM, digital twins, sensing, structural health monitoring, remote sensing, GIS, machine learning, and cloud workflows critically; address data quality, explainability, cybersecurity, ethics, professional responsibility, code governance, climate interactions, and emerging research.

Category: contemporary