ICUS/INCEDE NEWSLETTER
International Center for Urban Safety Engineering

Institute of Industrial Science
The University of Tokyo

VOLUME 3 NUMBER 3
OCTOBER -DECEMBER 2003

International Center for
Urban Safety Engineering

PROTECTING BUILDINGS AGAINSTMULTIPLE HAZARDS
By
Tso-Chien PAN*
Effects of Long-Distance
Major Earthquakes
Although Singapore is believed
to be located within the stable
Sunda plate with mild winds, it isabout 350 km away from an active
earthquake belt, comprising theG r e a t S u m a t r a Fa u l t a n d t h e
subduction zone of Sunda Trench,as shown in the sight f igure.
Singapore has never experienced
any earthquake damage, and henceb u i l d i n g s a r e g e n e r a l ly n o t
designed against the horizontal
earthquake loadings. However,
tremors caused by distant Sumatra
ear thquakes have been felt in
Singapore for many years.
T h e l a rg e s t s u b d u c t i o nearthquake that has occurred in the
Sunda trench is the great 1833 eventwith an estimated Mw between 8.8
and 9.2. The earthquake, with anaverage Mw of 9.0 at an epicentral
distance of 723 km, is thus selected
for a recent study as the maximum
credible earthquake (MCE), thefigure at the top of next page, that
the Sumatra subduction zone iscapable of generating. The larger of
the two horizontal components ofSeismotectonics of Sumatra region

page 2the synthetic MCE ground motions
is used in the convolution process to
obtain the surface accelerations at a
soft soil site. The seismic responseof a typical high-rise residential
b u i l d i n g i n S i n ga p o r e t o t h esynthetic MCE ground motions at a
soft soil site has recently been
investigated.
The typical high-rise residentialbuilding is a 15-storey, reinforced
concrete (RC) building. The overall
height of the building is 42.8 m, withthe first storey of 3.6 m and theothers 2.8 m. The dimensions of thefloor plan are 94.5 m in thelongitudinal direction and 11 m in
the transverse direction. The lateralload resistant system of the typicalbuilding is a RC frame-shear wall
dual system. The frame system
consists of a series of two-bay frames
spanned in the transverse direction,with 3 m spacing between frames
along the longitudinal direction. The
maximum base shear force resulting
from the soft soil site response to the
MCE event is about 14% of the totalb u i l d i n g d e a d we i g h t . T h i s
maximum base shear force ratio
exceeds the notional horizontal load
specified in the local building code
as 1.5% of the characteristic deadweight of a building.
Effects of Explosion-Induced
Ground Shocks
As part of the national effort tointensify the land use of the landscarce country, Singapore has
explored the possibility of using
underground facilities for various
purposes. One of initiatives is to
move the surface ammunition
storages underground, which will
reduce the precious land surrounding
the surface storages that have beensterilized for safety reasons. As aresult, the dynamic response ofbuilding structures to explosioninduced ground motions (EIGMs) or
ground shocks that may result fromunderground explosions has been
investigated. The results are
discussed in terms of the dynamic
failure of RC buildings subjected to

Acceleration time-histories and Fourier spectra for the maximum
credible earthquake at rock and soft soil sites

Horizontal acceleration time history of a simulated EIGM
ground shocks, which in turn affects
the minimum radial distance within
which no residential buildings shouldbe erected.
A non-seismically designed 6storey RC frame was subjected to asimulated EIGM. The simulated
EIGM for the horizontal groundmotion at a distance from the
explosion source is shown in thesecond figure. The simulated EIGM
has a peak ground acceleration of
124 g and a predominant frequency
of about 200 Hz. To understand theeffects of the duration and the input

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 3

impulse of EIGMs, duration
multipliers (DM) and amplitude
multipliers (AM) were applied on theabove EIGM. Both shear failure andjoint failure were investigated for the
first storey interior column where themaximum shear stress occurred.
Combinations of DM and AM
can lead to joint and/or shear failure
during the forced vibration (Phase I)
or the free vibration (Phase II). The
damage level for the first storey
column is presented in the figure
bela. One bold line shows theboundary between the moderate andZones of failure patterns for different response phasesc

page 3

Deformation and stress distributions of a long standoff case

Deformation and stress distributions of a short standoff casethe severe damage levels for Phase
I, Severe (I). The other bold line
shows the boundary between themoderate and the severe damagelevels for Phase II, Severe (II). Isoimpulse lines are shown as dottedlines in the background. Therefore,
it can be seen that the damage levelcomputed based on the damage
index def ined for seismicallydesign buildings does not reflect
adequately the shear failure andjoint failure caused by scaled
EIGMs.
Effects of External Blast
Loading
Recent terrorist bomb attacks
a r o u n d t h e wo r l d h av e
demonstrated the ferocity, cruelty
and unpredictability of the hazards
posed by terrorism. Instead oftrying to predict the next terror
attack, it appears to be more
important to protect critical assets
like waterworks, seaports, airports,
major buildings, etc. The transient
dynamic response of a high-risecommercial building to a
postulated external explosion load
resulting from a vehicle bomb at
the ground level near the building
has been investigated.

The high-rise commercial
building selected for the study is a
30-storey RC structure with frames
and a shear wall core. For a longstandoff distance, the local damage
index based on curvature is used toevaluate the flexural performanceof structural elements under blast
load. The second and the third
storey beams were found nearly incomplete failure. Severe damage
appeared in columns on the first
and the second storeys and in the
beams at the fourth and the fifth
storeys, as shown in the top figure.
For a short standoff distance,
The second f igure shows thatpartial collapse or moderate
damage may appear in the columnson the first and the second storeys.
The beams at the second and thet h i r d s t o r ey s we r e d e s t r oye dcompletely. Compared with thelong standoff case, damage in theshor t standoff case was more
localized.
Multiple-Hazard Protection of
Buildings
In summar y, in protecting
building structures in Singapore,
there is a need to investigates y s t e m a t i c a l ly t h e e ff e c t s o f
m u l t i p l e h a z a r d s w h i c h m ay
include both natural and man-madeevents. The multiple hazards thathave been investigated so f arcomprising the effects of longdistancemajor
Sumatraearthquakes, explosion induced
ground motions, and blast induced
ov e r p r e s s u r e . T h e d y n a m i c
response of the non-seismicallydesigned building structures in
Singapore to these postulated
multiple hazards has shown avariety of different characteristics.
This will pose a challenge tostructural engineers who must
strike a balance between safety andeconomy in designing a building
structure to resist the multiple
hazards which may result fromboth natural and man-made events.
It is important to realize that the
dynamic effects of these events
have drastically different loading
characteristics as well as frequencyof occurrence.
*Professor, Director
Protective Technology
Research Centre, School of Civil
and Environmental Engineering,
Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore 639798

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 3

page 4

ICUS organized International Symposium on New
Technologies for Urban Safety of Mega Cities in Asia
The recent developments ofvarious advanced technologies
including Remote sensing (RS),
GIS, GPS and other computational
tools have generated scopes andmotivation to focus on devising
appropriate methodologies for
management and maintenance ofurban buildings, infrastructures,
mitigation of urban disasters ande nv i r o n m e n t a l p r o bl e m s f o rsustainable development of the
Asian Mega Cities with adequate
safety and security. With therealization and recognition of theimportance of advanced tools inurban safety, the International
Center for Urban Safety
Engineering (ICUS) of the Instituteof Industrial Science and the 21stCentury COE Program entitled"Center of Excellence for
Sustainable Urban Regeneration"o f t h e U n iv e r s i t y o f To kyo
o rg a n i z e d a n i n t e r n a t i o n a l
symposium during October 30-31,
2003 on New Technologies for
Urban Safety of Mega Cities in
Asia. The symposium, held at the
Sanjo-kaikan conference hall of the
Hongo campus of the University of
To kyo , wa s a t t e n d e d by 1 2 6participants from 13 countries
around the world. This was thesecond international symposium
organized by ICUS on the same
theme after the very successful
first international symposium heldin Bangkok on October 28, 2002.

Symposium Staff
and it was followed by the Keynote
speech of Prof. Worsak KanokNukulchai, Dean of the School of
Civil Engineering, Asian Instituteof Technology (AIT), Thailand.
The other invited speakers for theplenary sessions were Dr. Sudhir
Misra, IIT Kanpur, India; Prof. T.C. Pan, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore; Prof. W.C.
Fan, University of Science andTechnology, China; Dr. Suvit
Vibulshresth, GISTDA, Thailand;
Dr. Pennung Warnitchai and Prof.

The two-day long program ofthe symposium was arranged in 12
technical sessions including two
p l e n a r y s e s s i o n s , wh e r e o n ekeynote speech and six special
lectures were delivered by invited
distinguished academicians andresearchers from several Asian
countries. The symposium wasinaugurated by Prof. Shin-ichiro
Ohgaki, Dean of the Faculty ofEngineering, University of Tokyo

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 3

Tawatchai Tingsanchali of AIT.
A total of 72 papers were
presented in the ten technicalsessions, some of which were heldin parallel, covering a wide range
of issues in the areas of urban
safety including earthquake, fire,
water management, infrastructure
management, disaster mitigationand environmental problems.
Several presentations were madeon newly developed advanced tools

Participants at the symposiumpage 5and methodologies for addressingt h e s e i s s u e s . T h e a c t ive
participation of the audience indiscussions that followed each of
the presentations was noteworthy
and that brought out many urgent
issues to the attention of theparticipants. The discussions raised
a very important question of how
the new advanced technologies canbe effectively used for urban safety
in developing countries of Asia,
where f inancial resources andtechnical know-how are limited.
Several speakers pointed out theneed of collaborative researchamong the researchers ofd ev e l o p e d a n d d ev e l o p i n g
countries for developing low-costand locally adaptive technologies
and capacity building for new
technologies to tackle the urgent
issues towards urban safety. This
point was addressed by Prof.
Yoshifumi Yasuoka of ICUS in his
closing remarks by highlighting the
purpose of this symposium fordeveloping a network for futurecollaboration and focus of ICUS
on collaborative research projects

with colleagues from Asian
countries. A network off ice of
ICUS has been already established
at AIT for coordinating suchactivities in the region.
The proceedings of thesymposium have been alreadypublished both in hardcopy anddigital formats. The digital formatof the proceedings is now available
on the home page of ICUS. If you
are interested in obtaining a
hardcopy of the proceedings,
please contact ICUS.

ICUS Activities Record
Some of the international
activities carried out by ICUS
faculty members during the periodof July-December 2003 besides
2nd ICUS International
Symposium.
P ro fe s s o r U o m o t o v i s i t e dSydney, Australia during July 202 4 fo r p a r t i c i p a t i o n i n 1 0 t h
ISO/TC71 Committee.
Professor Uomoto attended
International Symposium on NonD e s t r u c t i v e Te s t i n g i n C i v i lEngineering held at Berlin inGermany during September 14-21
Professor Yasuoka participatedin the International Symposiumf o r Commemorating, Tenth
Anniversary of Korean Society
fo r G e o - s p a t i a l I n fo r m a t i o n
System, held at Seol, Korea on 26
September.
Professor Yasuoka and Dr.
Endo attended the Asian
Conference on Remote Sensing
2003 at Busan, Korea during
November 5-7.
Dr. Meguro visited Istanbul,
Turkey during October 5-9 forparticipation in Turkey Disasteremergency measure study project.
Dr. Meguro visited Teheran,Prof. Andre Ozer(right) and Prof. Uomoto(left)

Iran during December 20-26 forparticipation in Iran National
Earthquake prevention of disasters
a n d a d m i n i s t ra t i v e p l a n
investigation for big earthquake inTehranD r. O o k a a t t a ch e d 5 t hInternational Conference on Urban
Climate held at Lodz, Poland
during September 1-5.
Ms. Yoshimura attached 28th
Annual Hazards Research andApplications Workshop held at
Denver, U.S.A. during July 13-18.
Ms. Yoshimura visited Berkly,
U.S.A. during for participation in ascholarship program for young
researchers supported by the U.S.Japan Cooperative Program on
Urban Earthquake Disaster
Mitigation.

Visitor to ICUS
During the period of October December, 2003, ICUS received
the following visitors.
-Prof. Jianhua Lin, Vice-Presidentof Peking University(November 28)-Prof. Dr. Andre Ozer, Universityof Liege(December 12)

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 3

page 6Highlights of Recent Activities of RNUS
The Regional Network Officefor Urban Safety (RNUS) of
ICUS at AIT has been expanding
its collaborative research andacademic activities withresearchers of AIT and otherorganizations in Asia. During thelast three months from October toD e c e m b e r, 2 0 0 3 , R N U S h a s
successfully organized various
activities including one seminara n d t wo wo r k s h o p s . I t h a s
received a research grant for a
research project on floodmodeling in the Mekong River
Basin.
Seminar on Water Resources in
the 21st Century
RNUS and Water Engineeringand Management f ield of AIT
jointly organized a seminar on"Water Resources in the 21stCentury under Climate Change
Scenarios". Held on 14 November,the event gave a venue for the
discussion of issues on water
resources under high stress andclimate change. It was graced by
Guest Speaker Associate
P r o f e s s o r D r. Ta i k a n O k i o f
t h e U n iversity of Tokyo, a ninter nationally-renowned
researcher in the f ield of landatmosphere interaction, variationof global climate, global water
resources analysis, virtual water,
and isotope analysis. He was
j o i n e d a t s e m i n a r by h i s t wocolleagues from the University of
To k y o , A s s o c i a t e P r o f . D r.
Shinjiro Kanae and Research
Fellow Mr. Kei Yoshimura, whohave been actively involved invarious projects including the
GEWEX, GLASS, GSWP, and the
IAHS PUB. The workshop was
rated highly by participants that
included visiting scholars fromJapan, researchers fromThammasat University (Thailand),representatives from Thai
Meteorological Division (TMD)
and faculty members, staff andstudents from AIT.

The three speakers of the SeminarWorkshop on Collaboration
between Yamanashi University
and Research Organizations inThailand
RNUS assisted the University
of Yamanashi, Japan in organizing
activities of the Workshop on" C o l l a b o r a t ive R e s e a r c h a n d
Education Prog ram of the
University of Yamanashi COEwith Thai Organizations and AIT"
that was held on 25 November,2003 at the Conference Center of
A I T. T h e o b j e c t i v e o f t h e
wo r k s h o p wa s t o e s t a bl i s h astrong tie for researchcollaboration between the heUniversity of Yamanashi, Japan

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 3

and various water-related Thai
organizations through AIT. The
one-day activity was graced by
Prof. Kuniyoshi Takeuchi of the
Ya m a n a s h i U nv i e r s i t y, w h o
introduced the "UY COE
Research and Education on
Integrated
River
Basin
Management in Asian Monsoon
Region" and Prof. Kengo Sunada
who talked about the Fuji River
Basin. Several experts from AITand Thai organizations presented
papers on hydrology and water
resources in Thailand, water use
management, water quality andsolid waste management, among
other topics.

A snapshot during the workshop

page 7
Third International Workshop
of WSSI
RNUS spearheaded theorganization of the 3rdInternational Workshop of theWorld Seismic Safety Initiative(WSSI) on "Seismic Risk
Management for Countries of theA s i a Pa c i f i c R eg i o n " a t t h eMiracle Grand Hotel in Bangkok
d u r i n g 7 - 8 D e c e m b e r, 2 0 0 3 .
WSSI is an undertaking of theInter national Association for
Earthquake Engineering (IAEE)
in support of the International
Decade for Natural Disaster
Reduction (IDNDR) of theUnited Nations. Since its
inception in 1992, WSSI has
b e e n wo r k i n g w i t h m a n y
c o u n t r i e s a r o u n d t h e wo r l dthrough its programs. To utilize
and share the experiences learnt
over the past ten or more years,
WSSI 2003 was organized toallow participants to: 1) learnf r o m c o u n t r i e s wh e r e W S S I
prog rams have made positive
difference in ter ms of risk
mitigation and management; 2)learn from countries where WSSI
prog rams have not made any

The workshop participants pose for a group photo
major impact in terms of risk
mitigation efforts, and 3) develop
a plan in consultation with all theattending countries about what
WSSI should do for the next five
years and where they should
focus their human and financial
resources. The workshop wasattendedbyov e r55
representatives from 19
countries.
Research Project
on Urban Flood Modelingin Mekong River Basin
RNUS has received a financial
grant from the Engineering
Consultants NEWJEC Inc. ofJapan to conduct a research
project entitled "Urban Flood
Inundation Modeling in MekongRiver Basin Using a Physically
Based Surface-River Model".
The main scope of the project
includes conducting research fori m p r ov e m e n t o f a n ex i s t i n g
p hy s i c a l ly b a s e d d i s t r i b u t e dmodel for urban floodinundation simulation and its
application and verif ication in
the Lower Mekong basin. The
project work aims at regional
development and cooperation.
This one and half year duration
project has started from
December, 2003.

3rd International Symposiumon Urban Safety Engineeringon Octorber 18-19, 2004
On Octorber 18-19, 2004, 3rdInternational Symposium on Urban
Safety Engineering will be held at
Deli, Agra. Dr. Sudhir Misra,
Associate Professor of IIT(Indian

Institute of Technology) is a secretariatof this symposium(sud@iitk.ac.in).
Application of registration andsubmission of abstract will start in
April, 2004. Reader can see thefollowing URL page for the
information of this symposium(http://icus-incede.iis.utokyo.ac.jp/isus04/index.htm). Further
details will be updated soon.

ICUS Activities Recognized
Mr. Shirase, Mr. Okuyama,
Mr. Sugiyama and Mr. Kaneda
working with Professor Uomoto,and Mr. Oda and Ms. Kan-no and

Ms. Yoshimura working with Dr.
M eg u r o , wo n a p r i z e f o r t h e
ex c e l l e n t p r e s e n t a t i o n a t t h e
2003 Annual meeting of Japan

Society of Civil Engineers heldat Tokushima in September.

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 3

page 8
Editor’s Note
I t o o k c h a rg e o f t h esecretariat of ICUS second
international symposium. Thisw a s go o d a n d a s e v e reexperience for me.
There were some first anda d v e n t u ro u s t h i n g s a t t h i sinternational symposium. First ofall, it was the first event that I
w a s t h e s e c re t a r i a t o f a n
international symposium
although I am very lazy. I thinkthat this choosing was a strategy
of ICUS head for educating me.
Moreover, it was the first time
t o h a v e re c r u i t e d g e n e ra l
speakers widely. I thought wecannot make the wide
discussions concerning urban
safety engineering if the speakers
were selected by only ICUS staffs

as in the f irst international
symposium.
It was necessary to make First
Circular by April last year to
recruit general speakers widely.
H o w e v e r, I a m n o t g o o d a t
English.
WhenI
wasembarrassed, Dr. Dutta made it
instead of me.
Then, the papers recruitment
started. Fortunately, many mailsof registrations and the inquiries
gathered. Unfortunately, I could
not afford processed them all. Ms.
Sharvani who was the secretaryo f I C U S re c e i v e d t h o s e a l linstead of me. I wish to express
my gratitude to her sincerely.
After papers gather, it wasnecessary to make the symposium
program. When I was nonplused,
Dr. Endo and Ms. Yoshimura
made the program instead of me.

International Center for Urban Safety Engineering, ICUS
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
Tel: (+81-3)5452-6472, Fax: (+81-3)5452-6476,
E-mail:icus-incede/iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
http://icus-incede.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/

International Center for
Urban Safety Engineering

At this symposium, I thoughtthat I wanted to invite a lot of
speakers. It is necessary to think
about the arrangement of thebudget for that, and to secure therooms for stay. Ms. Ochi, Ms.
Yoshimoto, and Ms. Fujita who
are the secretary of ICUS did allt h o s e wo rk s . M o re ov e r, t h ey
prepared the symposium hall.
Because the symposium ended
safely, I was deeply relieved. I
noticed only the work that I had
done was to have worried, when I
thought calmly. No matter how I
w i s h , I c a n n o t e x p re s s m y
gratitude to all staffs of thiss y m p o s i u m . H o w e v e r, i t i s
uncertain whether ICUS head's
strategy succeeded or not.

(by Ryozo Ooka)