Toward Resilience-Based Design (RBD): Lessons Learned from Past Earthquakes in Japan

Japan has faced many severe earthquakes in the last three decades. These earthquakes provided us with various lessons. The present paper addresses the overall consideration of earthquake ground motion generation, from the fault rupture, through the wave propagation in the deeper rock, to the near-surface soil amplification to explain how these great earthquakes led to severe damage to buildings. The soil-structure interaction (SSI) is used in explaining how the damage occurred during severe ground shaking. These earthquake ground motions are often above the design level for high-rise buildings. These intense ground motions, containing unusual features, should be considered in the design of important buildings. These observations lead to a consideration of a philosophy of resilience-based design (RBD) that is addressed in the present paper. While the conventional earthquake-resistant design philosophy is to upgrade the resistance against earthquake inputs, as a result of the intense ground motions described above, the emerging design philosophy is to improve both the resistance and recovery. Some examples of RBD are presented by using buildings with passive structural control systems. Future directions of RBD using innovative structural design technologies are presented.