| NEHRP's Provisions today currently governing conventional seismic resistant design. These provisions, though they ensure the life-safety of building occupants, extensive damage and economic losses may still occur in the structures. This minimum performance can be enhanced using the Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering methodology and passive control systems like base isolation and energy dissipation systems. Even though these technologies and the PBEE methodology are effective reducing economic losses and fatalities during earthquakes, getting them implemented into seismic resistant design has been challenging. One of the many barriers to their implementation has been their upfront costs. The green building community has faced some of the same challenges that the high performance seismic design community currently faces. The goal of this thesis is to draw on the success of the green building industry to provide recommendations that may be used overcome the barriers that high performance seismic design (HPSD) is currently facing. |
