"TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 440, Performance-Based Seismic Bridge Design (PBSD) summarizes the current state of knowledge and practice for PBSD. PBSD is the process that links decision making for facility design with seismic input, facility response, and potential facility damage. The goal of PBSD is to provide decision makers and stakeholders with data that will enable them to allocate resources for construction based on levels of desired seismic performance"--Publisher's description.

"Fragility curves are useful tools for reliability evaluation of structures as well as for identifying the most vulnerable components. This study focuses on the seismic fragility analysis of highway bridges. Two main approaches are used for this purpose: component-based and system-based fragility analyses. The seismic vulnerability of two existing bridges located in Montreal are assessed as case studies.The main goal of this study is to develop reliable seismic fragility curves for highway bridge structures considering all significant uncertainties involved. Uncertainties include those associated with modelling structural behavior, seismic inputs and definition of component capacities. The procedures are implemented for the fragility assessment of two existing bridges as case studies. For this purpose, deterioration due to corrosion of reinforcing steel and its effects on structural behavior are included, as well as validation of the Finite Element Model using dynamic properties obtained from ambient noise measurements. Proposed methods for the selection of appropriate set of ground motion records, the type of model analysis and probabilistic modeling of component capacities are presented and illustrated for the two case studies.Two stochastic methods are proposed for validating the Finite Element Model of a bridge. The first method is based on classical hypothesis testing procedures while the second uses a Bayesian updating approach. The stochastic methods are also used to update the input parameters, detect probable major damage in the bridges and determine the confidence interval on model responses as a function of laboratory test data and field observations.In order to limit the uncertainties involved in seismic inputs, a state-of-the-art ground motion record selection procedure based on Conditional Mean Spectrum (CMS) is used. Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) is performed to evaluate the record to record variability in seismic responses and to capture the nonlinearity in structural component behaviors.The first part of the thesis describes the application of component-based fragility analysis for the seismic vulnerability assessment of highway bridge structures. IDA is performed on the validated Finite Element model of the structure using an appropriate set of ground motion records. The results are used for estimating the relationships between ground motion intensity measures and component demands. A Joint Probabilistic Seismic Demand Model (JPSDM) is fitted to the results in order to develop component and system fragility curves of the structure.Since the component based fragility analysis of complex structures comprising a large number of components requires enormous computational efforts, in the second part of this study, a system-based approach for developing seismic system fragility curves is proposed which uses Support Vector Machines (SVM). SVM is a state-of-the-art machine learning technique which is used to discover patterns in highly dimensional and complex data sets. In this application, SVM is used to determine the relationship between ground motion intensity measures and peak structural responses. Seismic fragility curves are developed using Probabilistic SVM (PSVM). Finally, the efficiency of the proposed PSVM method for its application to vector-valued ground motion Intensity Measures (IM) as well as traditional single-valued IM are investigated." --

This dissertation focuses on developing, evaluating and testing a new approach to seismic risk assessment of highway transportation networks. Throughout the years many researches have been conducted on each different step used in this dissertation. Most of these steps use a probabilistic approach for each single problem; Monte Carlo simulation is the brute force approach used by this dissertation, however some assumptions throughout the process were necessary to achieve results that could be useful to the final user, decision maker. When dealing with the damageability of an infrastructure network, it is necessary to start from the study of the damageability of each vulnerable component. For highway transportation networks subject to a seismic event bridges are the vulnerable component. With enough time, enough information and enough manpower the best approach is step by step: to build an analytical model for each bridge, to perform probabilistic seismic hazard analysis PSHA at each bridge site and to assess the seismic vulnerability of each bridge. Unfortunately, when dealing with large networks, bridges are present in hundreds or even thousands (LA-OC network has more than 3000 bridges; therefore subdivision in classes and prototyping of each class is necessary to reduce the problem to a more manageable dimension. a single prototype that represents its entire class is analyzed and its damageability is applied to the entire class. Fragility curves will be used to represents the bridges' damageability. Different contributions are developed in this dissertation; the fundamental one is the development of fragility curves with two uni-variate random variables. The first will be the Intensity Measure of the ground motion; the second will be the angle of seismic incidence from which the ground motion struck the structure. Bridges with the same damageability class, located at different places within the network will behave differently under the same earthquake scenario, even if the intensity measure is the same, because of their different axis orientation and angle of seismic incidence. Therefore the spatial distribution properties of the network are taken into account when performing SRA. The development of a new software was necessary for the application of these new fragility curves to the SRA of highway transportation networks.

Focusing on fundamental principles, Hydro-Environmental Analysis: Freshwater Environments presents in-depth information about freshwater environments and how they are influenced by regulation. It provides a holistic approach, exploring the factors that impact water quality and quantity, and the regulations, policy and management methods that are necessary to maintain this vital resource. It offers a historical viewpoint as well as an overview and foundation of the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics affecting the management of freshwater environments. The book concentrates on broad and general concepts, providing an interdisciplinary foundation. The author covers the methods of measurement and classification; chemical, physical, and biological characteristics; indicators of ecological health; and management and restoration. He also considers common indicators of environmental health; characteristics and operations of regulatory control structures; applicable laws and regulations; and restoration methods. The text delves into rivers and streams in the first half and lakes and reservoirs in the second half. Each section centers on the characteristics of those systems and methods of classification, and then moves on to discuss the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of each. In the section on lakes and reservoirs, it examines the characteristics and operations of regulatory structures, and presents the methods commonly used to assess the environmental health or integrity of these water bodies. It also introduces considerations for restoration, and presents two unique aquatic environments: wetlands and reservoir tailwaters. Written from an engineering perspective, the book is an ideal introduction to the aquatic and limnological sciences for students of environmental science, as well as students of environmental engineering. It also serves as a reference for engineers and scientists involved in the management, regulation, or restoration of freshwater environments.

The proceedings of the conference is going to benefit the researchers, academicians, students and professionals in getting enlightened on latest technologies on structural mechanics, structure and infrastructure engineering. Further, work on practical applications of developed scientific methodologies to civil structural engineering will make the proceedings more interesting and useful to practicing engineers and structural designers.