"Earthquakes, Seismic Hazard, and Performance-Based Design"

Robin K. McGuire delivers EERI's 2009 William B. Joyner Memorial Lecture 

At the 61st EERI Annual Meeting, EERI member Robin K. McGuire, founder of Risk Engineering of Boulder, Colorado, delivered the 2009 William B. Joyner Memorial Lecture, entitled “Earthquakes, Seismic Hazard, and Performance-Based Design.” McGuire, a past director of EERI and a past president of the Seismological Society of America (SSA), has spent his career working at the science-engineering interface. He first developed and published many of the methods taken today as requirements for advanced probabilistic seismic risk analysis, including probabilistic analysis at multiple frequencies to calculate a uniform hazard spectrum, development of epistemic uncertainties in parameters such as maximum magnitude, treatment and mapping of epistemic uncertainties, derivation of a random-vibration model to predict earthquake ground shaking, deaggregation of seismic hazard to identify major contributors to hazard, and concepts of seismic risk to a lifeline system, rather than to an aggregate set of sites.

McGuire indicated in his lecture that basing the design of facilities on their possible performance during future earthquakes is a rational way to make decisions regarding seismic safety. He discussed how these decision processes must be explicit and quantitative in order to avoid biases. He covered two examples of applying explicit, quantitative processes: in the seismic design of nuclear power plants and in the proposed design of commercial buildings using building codes. Both examples depend on well-founded characterizations of future earthquake characteristics, including an assessment of uncertainties. 

McGuire holds degrees in structural engineering from MIT and University of California, Berkeley. For 30 years he has been consulting in seismic hazard analysis, earthquake engineering, and the application of probabilistic methods to engineering problems. McGuire has also developed earthquake hazard software that is used around the world in engineering, insurance, risk management, government, and research for seismic hazard estimation. More than 100 of his papers and articles on these topics have been published in technical journals or as technical reports. He has conducted seismic hazard analyses at sites of major engineering facilities at over 100 locations within the U.S. and at over 30 locations in foreign countries, in a range of technical environments.

McGuire’s was the sixth annual lecture given in honor of Bill Joyner for his distinguished career at the U.S. Geological Survey and his abiding commitment to the exchange of information at the interface of earthquake science and earthquake engineering. The lecture was established by SSA in cooperation with EERI. McGuire will give the lecture again at SSA’s April 2009 Annual Meeting in Monterey, California. A written version will be published in Earthquake Spectra and Seismological Research Letters. For more information about the award visit www.seismosoc.org/about/joyner_fund.html .