Buildings Damages after Elazığ, Turkey Earthquake on January 24, 2020

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake that occurred on January 24, 2020, has been effective in Turkey’s eastern regions. The earthquake, with recorded peak ground acceleration (PGA) value of 0.292 g, caused the destruction or heavy damage of buildings, especially in the city center of Elaz?? province. The purpose of this paper was to share the results of detailed investigation in the earthquake-stricken area. Additionally, the causes of damages and failures observed in the buildings were compared to those that had occurred in previous earthquakes in Turkey. In this study, the damages observed in especially RC buildings as well as in masonry and rural buildings were summarized, the lessons learned were evaluated, and the results were interpreted with reference to Turkish earthquake codes. In the study, it was particularly emphasized why the building stock underwent such damage even though the buildings were exposed to earthquake acceleration well below the design acceleration values.

     

导致塔里木河流域土地沙漠化扩展的深层次原因分析

就塔里木河流域的总体情况而言,在人类历史之前,沙漠化形成是一种完全受气候变化制约的自然过程,在现代干旱环境背景下,超载放牧、滥挖滥采、毁林毁草开荒以及水资源的不合理利用是导致目前塔里木河干流沙漠化持续扩展的几种主要的不合理人为活动。那么,又是什么原因促使人们在与自然相处过程中,采取了这些显然违背自然规律的活动？在实地考察基础上,结合前人研究的成果资料,对导致塔里木河流域沙漠化扩展的深层次原因进行分析。认为,主要是人口压力、政策失误和利益驱动促使人们在与自然相处过程中,采取了这些显然违背自然规律的活动。因此,控制人口增长、采取正确的政策引导、正确处理经济利益和生态环境之间的关系是促进当地土地沙漠化逆转所必须的。     

Dynamics of hourly sea level at Hillarys Boat Harbour,Western Australia: a chaos theory perspective

Water level forecasting using recorded time series can provide a local modelling capability to facilitate local proactive management practices. To this end, hourly sea water level time series are investigated. The records collected at the Hillarys Boat Harbour, Western Australia, are investigated over the period of 2000 and 2002. Two modelling techniques are employed: low-dimensional dynamic model, known as the deterministic chaos theory, and genetic programming, GP. The phase space, which describes the evolution of the behaviour of a nonlinear system in time, was reconstructed using the delay-embedding theorem suggested by Takens. The presence of chaotic signals in the data was identified by the phase space reconstruction and correlation dimension methods, and also the predictability into the future was calculated by the largest Lyapunov exponent to be 437 h or 18 days into the future. The intercomparison of results of the local prediction and GP models shows that for this site-specific dataset, the local prediction model has a slight edge over GP. However, rather than recommending one technique over another, the paper promotes a pluralistic modelling culture, whereby different techniques should be tested to gain a specific insight from each of the models. This would enable a consensus to be drawn from a set of results rather than ignoring the individual insights provided by each model.     

A new global alignment approach for underwater optical mapping

Lately, underwater vehicles have become important tools for exploration, monitoring and creation of maps of the seabed. Within mapping applications, the maps obtained from optical data are becoming essential in different study areas such as biological, geological and archaeological surveys, or in detection of benthic temporal changes. However, the underwater medium is very challenging for optical sensors and does not allow the area of interest to be imaged in a single image. Therefore, image mosaicing methods are necessary. Although recent advances in detection of correspondences between images have resulted in highly effective image registration methods, global alignment methods are still needed to obtain a globally coherent mosaic. In this paper, we propose a new global alignment method which works on the mosaic frame and does not require non-linear optimisation. Additionally, a simple image rectifying method is presented to reduce the down-scaling effect which might occur when minimising errors defined in the mosaic frame. Moreover, this rectifying method can also be seen as an alternative and straightforward way of incorporating different sensor information if available. The proposed framework has been tested with underwater image sequences. The resulting method is faster than its counterparts while providing the same level of registration quality.     

Seismic risk assessment of buildings in Izmir,Turkey

Izmir, the third largest city and a major economic center in Turkey, has more than three million residents and half million buildings. In this study, the seismic risk in reinforced concrete buildings that dominate the building inventory in Izmir is investigated through multiple approaches. Five typical reinforced concrete buildings were designed, modeled and assessed for seismic vulnerability. The sample structures represent typical existing reinforced concrete hospital, school, public, and residential buildings in Izmir. The seismic assessments of the considered structures indicate that they are vulnerable to damage during expected future earthquakes.     

Selecting and scaling real ground motion records using harmony search algorithm

In this study, a solution model is proposed to obtain input ground motion datasets compatible with given design spectra based on meta-heuristic harmony search algorithm. The utility of the solution model is demonstrated by generating ground motion datasets matching the Eurocode-8 design spectra for different soil types out of an extensive database of recorded motions. A total of 352 records are selected from the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Center (PEER) Strong Motion Database based on magnitude, distance, and site conditions to form the original ground motion domain. Then, the proposed harmony search based solution algorithm is applied on the pre-selected 352 time-series to obtain the ground motion record sets compatible with design spectra. The results demonstrate that the proposed HS based solution model provides an efficient way to develop input ground motion record sets that are consistent with code-based design spectra.     

Spatial analysis of cohabiting tertiary students’ housing location in Ibadan,Nigeria

Cohabitation, as a form of sexual relationship, is becoming popular among tertiary students in developing countries. This is largely due to emergence of sexual liberalization that projects premarital sex as acceptable societal norm. The paper analyses the spatial pattern of cohabitation in communities abutting tertiary institutions in Ibadan, Nigeria. Snowball sampling technique was used to identify cohabiters at Agbowo and Apete and the Coordinates of their residence were taken using Global Positioning System. Nearest Neighbour Analysis (NNA) was adopted for spatial analysis. Spatial pattern of cohabitation at Agbowo (NNA value 1.072615) shows a random pattern. The pattern at Apete (NNA value 0.802374) displays a cluster pattern. Finding identifies, ownership, use and types of building; inadequate on-campus accommodation; peer pressure and poverty as cohabitation causal factors influencing the observed spatial patterns. Therefore, parents and guardians should adopt high-investment strategy in safeguarding the welfare and wellbeing of their wards.     

Earthquake disaster risk assessment and evaluation for Turkey

Turkey is the one country in which 90% of the buildings are subject to the risk of earthquake disaster. Recent earthquakes revealed that Turkey’s present residential reinforced-concrete constructions are insufficient in earthquake resistance. Many of the buildings which collapsed or were severely damaged have been rehabilitated by applying simple methods, whose adequacy is questionable. As in Japan and the United States, Turkey’s earthquake assessment studies have increased, especially after earthquakes in 1999, In US, several methodologies and standards, such as Hazard-US (HAZUS) and Applied Technology Council (ATC) 13-20-21 and 156, provide comprehensive earthquake loss estimation methodology for post-earthquake assessment. This paper provides post-earthquake assessment and disaster management for Turkey. The main aim of the post-earthquake assessment discussed is to evaluate loss and estimate damage through disaster management approach. Classification criteria for damage are essential to determine the situation after an earthquake in both the short and long terms. The methodology includes probabilistic-based analysis, which considers the magnitude of Ms ≥ 5.0 earthquakes between 1900 and 2005, for determining the probabilistic seismic hazard for Turkey.