• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.17-35
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• 2016

Earthquake-induced disasters are often more severe in locations with soft soils than firm soils or rocks due to differences in ground motion amplification. On a regional scale, such differences can be estimated by spatially predicting subsurface soil thickness over the entire target area. In general, soil deposits are generally deeper in coastal or riverside areas than in inland regions. In this study, a coastal metropolitan area, Incheon, was selected to assess site effects and provide information on seismic hazards. Spatial prediction of geotechnical layers was performed for the entire study area within the GIS framework. Approximately 7,000 existing borehole drilling data in the Incheon area were gathered and archived into the GIS Database (DB). In addition, surface geotechnical data were acquired from a walkover survey. Based on the built geotechnical DB, spatial zoning maps of site-specific seismic response parameters were created and presented for use in a regional seismic strategy. Site response parameters were performed to determine site coefficients for seismic design over the entire target area and compared with each other. Site classifications and subsequent seismic zoning were assigned based on site coefficients. From this seismic zonation case study in Incheon, we verified that geotechnical GIS-DB can create spatial zoning maps of site-specific seismic response parameters that are useful for seismic hazard mitigation particularly in coastal metropolitan areas.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2018

Earthquake disasters that exceed the design criteria can pose significant threats to nuclear facilities. Seismic probabilistic safety assessment(PSA) is a probabilistic way to quantify such risks. Accordingly, seismic PSA has been applied to domestic and overseas nuclear power plants, and the safety of nuclear power plants was evaluated and prepared against earthquake hazards. However, there were few examples where seismic PSA was applied in case of a research reactor with a relatively small size compared to nuclear power plants. Therefore, in this study, seismic PSA technique was applied to actually completed research reactor to analyze its safety. Also, based on these results, the optimization study on the seismic capacity of the system constituting the research reactor was carried out. As a result, the possibility of damage to the core caused by the earthquake hazard was quantified in the research reactor and its safety was confirmed. The optimization study showed that the optimal seismic capacity distribution was obtained to ensure maximum safety at a low cost compared with the current design. These results, in the future, can expect to be used as a quantitative indicator to effectively improve the safety of the research reactor with respect to earthquakes.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2007

Until recently Korea is considered to be immune from the earthquake hazard because it is located for away from the active fault. However, we have noticed that recent strong earthquakes inflicted enormous losses on human lives and nation's economy all over the world. Hence, there has been raised the importance of the earthquake resistant design for various infrastructures. In this research, new methodologies for the seismic design and performance assessment of reinforced concrete(RC) bridge pier were proposed from experimental results of 82 circular RC bridge piers and 54 rectangular RC bridge piers tested in domestic and aboard. New seismic design method was based on the concept of the limited ductile design, which could be practically used for low or moderate seismic regions like Korea. Further study for the seismic safety of RC bridge piers was carried out to enhance the seismic performance of aged RC bridge piers, which were designed and constructed before implementing the 1992 seismic design provision in Korea. New formula for the seismic performance assessment of RC bridge piers was proposed and practically used for the decision on the need of repair and retrofit of many aged RC bridge piers.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.544-552
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• 2001

Korea is classified into low and moderate seismic zone from the view-point of seismic hazard level. Korean seismic provisions has been developed based on UBC and ATC 3-06. Thus, in calculation of design base shear according to Korean provisions response modification factor (R) is included in the formula of design base shear. The major role of this factor is to reduce the elastic design base shear whereby structures can behave in inelastic range during design level earthquake ground motions(mean return period of 475 yrs.). R factor is assigned according to material and structural systems. In this study, R factor for bearing wall system is considered. Most of the walls of apartment buildings in Korea resist gravity and seismic loads simultaneously so that this wall system can be classified into bearing wall system. Structural details of these walls are different from those used in Japan and U.S.. They are all rectangular in sectional shape rather than barbell in shape, and also have special lateral reinforcement details at the boundaries of a wall. In Korean seismic design provisions(1988), two different values(3.0 and 3.5) of R factor are assigned to the bearing wall systems according to the wall details. However, in updated seismic provisions(2000), only one value is assigned to R factor(3.0) irrespective of wall details. In this study, the design base shear values in Korean seismic design provisions(1988, 2000), ATC 3-06, UBC are compared. Also experimental study was carried out to evaluate the seismic performance of structural walls. For this purpose, five test specimens were made which have special details used in apartment bearing wall systems in Korea. Based on the results of this study, response modification factor for bearing wall system is discussed.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.1C
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• pp.65-76
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• 2010

Recent earthquake events revealed that severe seismic damages were concentrated mostly at sites composed of soil sediments rather than firm rock. This indicates that the site effects inducing the amplification of earthquake ground motion are associated mainly with the spatial distribution and dynamic properties of the soils overlying bedrock. In this study, an integrated GIS-based information system for geotechnical data was constructed to establish a regional counterplan against ground motions at a representative metropolitan area, Seoul, in Korea. To implement the GIS-based geotechnical information system for the Seoul area, existing geotechnical investigation data were collected in and around the study area and additionally a walkover site survey was carried out to acquire surface geo-knowledge data. For practical application of the geotechnical information system used to estimate the site effects at the area of interest, seismic zoning maps of geotechnical earthquake engineering parameters, such as the depth to bedrock and the site period, were created and presented as regional synthetic strategy for earthquake-induced hazards prediction. In addition, seismic zonation of site classification was also performed to determine the site amplification coefficients for seismic design at any site and administrative sub-unit in the Seoul area. Based on the case study on seismic zonations for Seoul, it was verified that the GIS-based geotechnical information system was very useful for the regional prediction of seismic hazards and also the decision support for seismic hazard mitigation particularly at the metropolitan area.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.34 no.9
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• pp.43-49
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• 2018

Seismic hazard assessments are performed on a variety of infrastructure projects. One component of a seismic hazard assessment is the attenuation relationship. Several attenuation relationships have been developed over the decades to predict peak ground acceleration under a variety of site conditions. For example, many attenuation relationships were designed to estimate peak ground acceleration, as well as other intensity measures, under a variety of soil conditions, mostly using the average shear wave velocity for the upper 30 m of earth material as a classification scheme. However, certain types of infrastructure, such as tunnels and nuclear power plants, are typically founded on and in bedrock. Using data from Japan, we developed a simple correlation to estimate peak ground acceleration for rock sites and compare the results from another popular attenuation relationship. Results indicate the popular attenuation relationship to be less than the proposed model for distances less than 200 km.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.03a
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• pp.1225-1234
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• 2009

As the Wenchuan Earthquake was of high magnitude and shallow seismic focus, it caused great damage and serious geo-hazards. By the field investigation and remote-sensing interpretation after the earthquake and by using means of GIS, the distribution of geo-hazards triggered by the earthquake was analyzed and the conclusions are as follows: (1) the earthquake geo-hazards showed the feature of zonal distribution along the earthquake fault zone and linear distribution along the rivers; (2) the distribution of earthquake geo-hazards had a marked hanging wall effect, for the development density of geo-hazards in the hanging wall of earthquake fault was obviously higher than that in the foot wall and the width of strong development zone in the hanging wall was about 10 km; (3) the topographical slope was a main factor which controlled the development of earthquake geo-hazards and a vast majority of geo-hazards were distributed on the slopes of 20 to 50 degrees; (4) the earthquake geo-hazards had a corresponding relationship with the elevation and micro-landform, for most hazards happened in the river valleys and canyon sections below the elevation of 1500 to 2000 m, particularly in the upper segment of canyon sections (namely, the turning point from the dale to the canyon). Thin ridge, isolated or full-face space mountains were most sensitive to the seismic wave, and had a striking amplifying effect. In these areas, collapses and landslides were most likely to develop; (5) the study also showed that different lithologies determined the types of geo-hazards, and usually, landslides occurred in soft rocks, while collapses occurred in hard rocks.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.15-21
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• 2007

Strong motion attenuation relationship represents a comprehensive trend of ground shakings at sites with distances from the source, geology, local soil conditions, and others. It is necessary to develop an attenuation relationship with careful considerations of characteristics of the target area for reliable seismic hazard/risk assessments. In the study, observed ground motions from the January 2007 magnitude 4.9 Odaesan earthquake and the events occurring in the Gyeongsang provinces are compared with the previously proposed ground attenuation relationships in the Korean Peninsula to select most appropriate one. In the meantime, a few strong ground motion attenuation relationships are proposed and introduced in HAZUS, which have been designed for the Western United States and the Central and Eastern United States. The selected relationship from the ones for the Korean Peninsula has been compared with attenuation relationships available in HAZUS. Results of the study will increase the reliability of seismic hazard/risk assessments using HAZUS in the Korean Peninsula.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.5 no.4 s.19
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• pp.71-78
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• 2005

The principal basic concepts of aseismic design minimize damage of human-life and have little probability during life of structures. For detailed understanding of the design, the best reasonable countermeasure can be possible equally the smallest damage of human-life and economic loss. As a result, it can be achieved by notion of not structure-centered but city-centered, the notion is actualized by development of a macro-level evaluation. A seismic damage between city and country is different. And the larger the city then, the greater the loss by rather collateral hazards than collapse of structures. Hence, the macro-evaluation of an earthquake disaster is suitable for an old city where is center of political and economic activity, and is concentration of population and infrastructure. This study aims to develop comprehensive earthquake desaster risk index, and assesses relative earthquake risk of six zones in Seoul metropolitan area.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.153-184
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• 2015

Most damaging earthquakes come as complex sequences characterized by strong aftershocks, sometimes by foreshocks and often by multiple mainshocks. Complex earthquake sequences have enormous seismic hazard, engineering and societal implications as their impact on buildings and infrastructures may be much more severe at the end of the sequence than just after the mainshock. In this paper we examine whether historical sources can help characterizing the rare earthquake sequences of pre-instrumental times in full, including fore-, main- and aftershocks. Thanks to the its huge documentary heritage, Italy relies on one of the richest parametric earthquake catalogues worldwide. Unfortunately most current methods for assessing seismic hazard require that earthquake catalogues be declustered by removing all shocks that bear some dependency with those identified as mainshocks. We maintain that this requirement has led most modern historical seismologists to focus mainly on mainshocks rather than also on the fore- and aftershocks. To shed light onto major earthquake sequences of the past, rather than onto individual mainshocks, we investigated 10 damaging earthquake sequences ($M_w$ 4.7-7.0) that hit the L'Aquila area and central Abruzzo from the 14th to the 20th century. We find that most of the results of historical research are important for modern seismology, yet their rendering by the current parametric catalogues causes most information to be lost or not easily transferred to the potential users. For this reason we advocate a change in current strategies and the creation of a more flexible standard for storing and using all the information made available by historical seismology.