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The Concrete Coalition is a network of individuals, governments, institutions, and agencies with a shared interest in assessing the risk associated with dangerous nonductile concrete buildings and developing strategies for fixing them. It is a program of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), co-sponsored by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), and the Applied Technology Council (ATC). The Concrete Coalition received funding support from the U.S. Geological Survey to build a database of photographs from past earthquakes that illustrate deficiencies contributing to collapse of concrete buildings. In addition to photographs, the database has been populated with information from particular buildings, including sketches, drawings, and information on retrofit. The result is an online database of concrete buildings damaged in earthquakes with information drawn from a wide variety of published sources compiled by summer interns with the guidance of mentors from structural engineering firms around the world. As this database is further populated, it will be able to help analysts understand the relative importance of deficiencies with respect to collapse and performance more generally. Data were collected in coordination with the ATC 95 project, Development of a Collapse Indicator Methodology for Existing Reinforced Concrete Buildings, where experts assembled information on buildings that have collapsed in past earthquakes. While the ATC-95 project focused exclusively on collapsed buildings, the EERI interns and mentors worked with buildings that suffered varying levels of damage from many countries. The interns identified the wide range of building characteristics in such a way that future analysis will be possible. Information was drawn from reports, drawings, photographs, and meetings with mentors and reviewers in an effort to provide insight into the important aspects of the performance of these concrete buildings. Four engineering students were selected as interns for the summer of 2012. An exciting innovation was the interaction of industry mentors and reviewers. Mentors met with the interns and discussed particular buildings with them, as well as various reconnaissance observations more generally. In addition, mentors reviewed the individual building reports prepared by the interns. The interns worked from an interactive PDF form, gathering information from various reports and published articles on the earthquakes, as well as from interviews with the mentors. Each of these reports was then reviewed and revised, based on reviewer comments. An important feature of this form is the list of design and construction characteristics. For each of the 130 characteristics, interns scoured source materials for discussions of the role of the characteristics in the building’s performance. For each characteristic, they indicated its contribution to observed damage as unlikely; possible; likely; unknown (no discussion in the sources), or not applicable (meaning that the particular characteristic was not present or otherwise not relevant for the particular building). The database will be functional by September 2013, and EERI members will be invited to browse through the reports and/or contribute their own reports. A tool kit is under development to guide users in the preparation of their own reports on particular damaged buildings in past earthquakes.

The California Clearinghouse is a consortium that facilitates coordination of post-earthquake field investigations and shares observations and knowledge among the scientific, engineering and emergency response communities after a damaging California earthquake. The Clearinghouse is managed by representatives from five core groups: the California Geological Survey (CGS), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), the California Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA; Formerly Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES)) and the California Seismic Safety Commission. Since the Clearinghouse was established in 1972, there have been more than 10 Clearinghouse activations. The last major clearinghouse activation was after the Northridge earthquake in 1994. Since that time, technology has advanced greatly. The static map and pins has been upgraded to a dynamic GIS map with markers, geospatial overlays, and zoom capabilities. The large datasets associated with these maps require a new way of thinking about data after a disaster. Having protocols for collecting and sharing data, before the next earthquake, is essential. As the contact point for researchers and scientists after a California earthquake, the California Clearinghouse is taking the lead in California to develop these protocols through a series of technological demonstration exercises. Using the California Golden Guardian and Shakeout exercises over three years as the backdrop for the Clearinghouse exercises has given the Clearinghouse the opportunity to explore what does and doesn’t work for data collection and sharing. For collecting data, participants have had the opportunity to test a suite of field tools to submit observations to the Clearinghouse. These tools export data in a variety of formats—all of which must be accommodated by the Clearinghouse. Once the data is collected, the information is shared through the Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS) middleware developed by the U.S. Dept. Of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, and displayed on the Clearinghouse website through SpotOnResponse, the Clearinghouse’s situational awareness tool. During the May 2013 Golden Guardian Exercise, data submitted included Bay Area liquefaction, fault and landslide zones from the California Geological Survey, permitted hazardous materials facilities from the Department of Toxic Substance Control, Licensed Healthcare Facilities from the California Department of Public Health, and hundreds of simulated field observations. This type of data from researchers and scientists is not only important for learning from earthquakes, but with hundreds of people in the field, it is also a valuable resource that can be used to update emergency responders. During the exercise, all of the collected data was visible to the public on the Clearinghouse website and after an actual earthquake, the Clearinghouse liaison in the State Operations Center (SOC) would be monitoring this map and relaying relevant information to Cal EMA. By establishing dynamic protocols for data collection and sharing that can be adapted as technology continues to evolve, the California Clearinghouse is setting the stage for researchers and scientists to contribute to the response and recovery of the state after the next major California earthquake.

GEM Technical Report 2013-02, Exposure modelling, This report documents the development and applications of the Building Taxonomy for the Global Earthquake Model (GEM). The purpose of the GEM Building Taxonomy is to describe and classify buildings in a uniform manner as a key step towards assessing their seismic risk. Criteria for development of the GEM Building Taxonomy were that the Taxonomy be relevant to seismic performance of different construction types; be comprehensive yet simple; be collapsible; adhere to principles that are familiar to the range of users; and ultimately be extensible to non-buildings and other hazards. The taxonomy was developed in conjunction with other GEM researchers and builds on the knowledge base from other taxonomies, including the EERI and IAEE World Housing Encyclopedia, PAGER-STR, and HAZUS. The taxonomy is organized as a series of expandable tables, which contain information pertaining to various building attributes. Each attribute describes a specific characteristic of an individual building or a class of buildings that could potentially affect their seismic performance. The following 13 attributes have been included in the GEM Building Taxonomy Version 2.0 (v2.0): 1.direction 2.material of the lateral load-resisting system 3.lateral load-resisting system 4.height 5.date of construction or retrofit 6.occupancy 7.building position within a block 8.shape of the building plan 9.structural irregularity 10.exterior walls 11.roof 12.floor 13.foundation system. The report illustrates the practical use of the GEM Building Taxonomy by discussing example case studies, in which the building-specific characteristics are mapped directly using GEM taxonomic attributes and the corresponding taxonomic string is constructed for that building, with “/” slash marks separating attributes. For example, for the building shown at right, the GEM Building Taxonomy string is: DX1/ MUR+CLBRS+MOCL2 /LWAL3/ DY/MUR+CLBRS+MOCL/LWAL/YPRE:19394/HEX:25/RES6 /7/8/IRRE9/10/RSH3+RWO+RWO211/FW12/13/ which can be read as (1) Direction = [DX or DY] (the building has the same lateral load-resisting system in both directions); (2) Material = [Unreinforced Masonry + solid fired clay bricks + cement: lime mortar]; (3) Lateral Load-Resisting System = [Wall]; (4) Date of construction = [pre-1939]; (5) Height = [exactly 2 storeys]; (6) Occupancy = [residential, unknown type]; (7) Building Position = [unknown = no entry]; (8) Shape of building plan = [unknown = no entry]; (9) Structural irregularity = [regular]; (10) Exterior walls = [unknown = no entry]; (11) Roof = [Shape: pitched and hipped, Roof covering: clay tiles, Roof system material: wood, Roof system type: wood trusses]; (12) Floor = [Floor system: Wood, unknown]; (13) Foundation = [unknown = no entry]. Mapping of GEM Building Taxonomy to selected taxonomies is included in the report – for example, the above building would be referenced by previous structural taxonomies as: PAGER-STR as UFB, UFB3 or UFB4, by the World Housing Encyclopedia at 7 or 8 and by the European Macroseismic Scale (98) asM5. The Building Taxonomy data model is highly flexible and has been incorporated within a relational database architecture. Due to its ability to represent building typologies using a shorthand form, it is also possible to use the taxonomy for non-database applications, and we discuss possible applications or adaptation for Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems, and for the insurance industry. The GEM Building Taxonomy was independently evaluated and tested by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), which received 217 TaxT reports from 49 countries, representing a wide range of building typologies, including single and multi-storey buildings, reinforced and unreinforced masonry, confined masonry, concrete, steel, wood, and earthen buildings used for residential, commercial, industrial and educational occupancy. Based on these submissions and other feedback, the EERI team validated that the GEM Building Taxonomy is highly functional, robust and able to describe different buildings around the world. The GEM Building Taxonomy is accompanied by supplementary resources. All terms have been explained in a companion online Glossary, which provides both text and graphic descriptions. The Taxonomy is accompanied by TaxT, a computer application that enables a user to record information about a building or a building typology using the attributes of the GEM Building Taxonomy v2.0. TaxT can generate a taxonomy string and enable a user to generate a report in PDF format which summarizes the attribute values (s)he has chosen as representative of the building typology under consideration. The report concludes with recommendations for future development of the GEM Building Taxonomy. Appendices provide the detailed GEM Building Taxonomy tables and additional resources, as well as mappings to other taxonomies.