Current Professional Research

Earthquake Hazard

• • Involved with USGS and UCERF for the update of 2014 National Hazard maps.

  • Working closely with USGS in order to estimate the uncertainty in the US national hazard maps (e.g., as outlined in IMW workshop).

  • Organized a special session in 2012 SSA annual meeting with Mark Petersen of USGS on "Uncertainty in the Estimation of Earthquake Hazard" in order to address the issues of estimating uncertainty in the hazard.

  • Researched with D. Perkins of USGS on the issue of "Effect of B-Fault Recurrence Uncertainty on Hazard in the Los Angeles Area" and presented in 2011 SSA annual meeting.

  • Researched with Art Frakel of USGS on uncertainty in US national hazard and its impact on the estimation of risk of collapse of structures. The research results are presented in SSA 2010 annual meeting.

Building Vulnerability and Loss Estimation for Earthquakes

• • Developed a simulation-based framework for estimating the epistemic and aleatory vulnerability of buildings and the results published in EESD(2012).

  • Developed loss distribution and spatial correlation models for earthquake losses based on insurance loss data and the results are published in 15WCEE.

  • Researched on epistemic uncertainty in portfolio loss calculations and the results are published in 15WCEE.

  • A simulation-based methodology is developed for performance evaluation of tall buildings for the PEER tall buildings initiative (TBI) project and the results can be found in PEER 2011/05 report.

  • Developed a simulation-based framework for building loss estimation due to earthquakes and presented the approach in 2009 SSA annual meeting and the results were also published in 2009 ICOSSAR.

Seismic Building Response (or Engineering Demand Parameter, EDP)

• • Evaluated the response of tall buildings to recorded and simulated ground motions. The results are presented in 2012 SSA annual meeting and published in 15WCEE.

  • Invited to present in the 2010 SCEC workshop on "Engineering Workshop on Tall Building Safety". The topic was "Do Simulated and Recorded Time Histories Produce Different Building Responses?" .

  • Researched on the issue of dependence of tall building responses on higher mode and the research results are published in 2010 USNCEE.

  • Worked with different researchers in PEER GMSM group on evaluating different methods of scaling ground motion records and the results are published in PEER 2009/01 report.