Seismic Analyses for San Francisco Port-Wide Risk Assessment

The Port of San Francisco is a historic urban waterfront supporting a variety of businesses, transportation, tourism, and more. As part of a large rehabilitation project, the Port is performing a Port-wide multi-hazard risk assessment, which includes an earthquake vulnerability assessment. This assessment includes seismic evaluation of structures for both inertial and kinematic (ground displacement) demands. Since a detailed seismic evaluation of every single structure along the waterfront is neither feasible nor cost-effective, the engineering team is tasked with characterizing over 50 marine structures by a limited selection of representative structures. Based on a suite of seismic analyses, the team develops a set of seismic capacity curves for every representative marine structure on the waterfront. This paper discusses the process of selecting representative structures which capture the key structural variations, the methodology used in performing the seismic analyses, the approach to developing the capacity curves, and key takeaways to help guide project teams in similar Port-wide risk assessments.

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