An Engineering Application of Earthquake Early Warning: ePAD-Based Decision Framework for Elevator Control
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 1
Abstract
In a medium-to-large earthquake, there are often reports of people being trapped or injured in elevators. This study investigates using an earthquake early warning (EEW) system, which provides seconds to tens of seconds warning before seismic waves arrive at a site, to help people escape from the elevators before a strong shaking arrives. However, such an application remains as a major engineering challenge due to the uncertainty of the EEW information and the short lead time available. A recent study presented an earthquake probability-based automated decision-making (ePAD) framework to address these issues. This paper focuses on studying the influence of two commonly ignored factors, uncertainty of warning and lead time, on the decision of stopping the elevators and opening the doors when an EEW message is received. Application of the ePAD framework requires using the performance-based earthquake engineering methodology for elevator damage prediction, making decision based on a cost-benefit model and reducing computational time with a surrogate model. The authors’ results show that ePAD can provide rational decisions for elevator control based on EEW information under different amounts of lead time and uncertainty level of the warning.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge funding from the U.S. Geological Survey and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for this project.
References
Allen, R., Brown, H., Hellweg, M., Khainovski, O., Lombard, P., and Neuhauser, D. (2009a). “Real-time earthquake detection and hazard assessment by ElarmS across California.” Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L00B08.
Allen, R., Gasparini, P., Kamigaichi, O., and Böse, M. (2009b). “The status of earthquake early warning around the world: An introductory overview.” Seismol. Res. Lett., 80(5), 682–693.
Boore, D., and Atkinson, G. (2008). “Ground-motion prediction equations for the average horizontal component of PGA, PGV, and 5%-damped PSA at spectral periods between 0.01 s and 10.0 s.” Earthquake Spectra, 24(1), 99–138.
Böse, M., et al. (2014). “CISN ShakeAlert—An earthquake early warning demonstration system for California.” Early warning for geological disasters—Scientific methods and current practice, F. Wenzel and J. Zschau, eds., Springer, New York, 49–69.
Böse, M., Hauksson, E., Solanki, K., Kanamori, H., and Heaton, T. (2009a). “Real-time testing of the on-site warning algorithm in southern California and its performance during the July 29 2008 Mw5.4 Chino Hills earthquake.” Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L00B03.
Böse, M., Hauksson, E., Solanki, K., Kanamori, H., Wu, Y., and Heaton, T. (2009b). “A new trigger criterion for improved real-time performance of onsite earthquake early warning in southern California.” Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am., 99(2A), 897–905.
Cal/OSHA (Division of Occupational Safety and Health). (2012). “Title 8 regulations, sub-chapter 6, elevator safety orders, group 3, new elevator installations, article 37, seismic requirements for elevators, escalators and moving walks, section 3137.” 〈http://www.dir.ca.gov/Title8/3137.html〉 (Apr. 27, 2014).
Campbell, K., and Bozorgnia, Y. (2008). “NGA ground motion model for the geometric mean horizontal component of PGA, PGV, PGD and 5% damped linear elastic response spectra for periods ranging from 0.01 to 10 s.” Earthquake Spectra, 24(1), 139–171.
Cheng, M., Wu, S., Heaton, T., and Beck, J. (2014). “Earthquake early warning application to buildings.” Eng. Struct., 60, 155–164.
Cua, G., and Heaton, T. (2007). “The virtual seismologist (VS) method: A Bayesian approach to earthquake early warning.” Earthquake early warning systems, P. Gasparini, G. Manfredi, and J. Zschau, eds., Springer, Naples, Italy, 97–132.
Faulkner, M., Olson, M., Chandy, R., Krause, J., Chandy, K., and Krause, A. (2011). “The next big one: Detecting earthquakes and other rare events from community-based sensors.” Proc., 10th ACM/IEEE Int. Conf. on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, IEEE, New York, 13–24.
Grasso, V. (2005). “Seismic early warning systems: Procedure for automated decision making.” Ph.D. thesis, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Napoli.
Hilbring, D., Titzschkau, T., Buchmann, A., Bonn, G., Wenzel, F., and Hohnecker, E. (2014). “Earthquake early warning for transport lines.” Nat. Hazards, 70(3), 1795–1825.
Hoshiba, M. (2013). “Real-time prediction of ground motion by Kirchhoff-Fresnel boundary integral equation method: Extended front detection method for earthquake early warning.” J. Geophys. Res.: Solid Earth, 118(3), 1038–1050.
Howard, R. (1966). “Information value theory.” IEEE Trans. Syst. Sci. Cybern., 2(1), 22–26.
Iervolino, I., Giorgio, M., and Manfredi, G. (2007). “Expected loss-based alarm threshold set for earthquake early warning systems.” Earthquake Eng. Struct. Dyn., 36(9), 1151–1168.
Kasai, L., Pu, W., and Wada, A. (2012). “Responses of tall buildings in Tokyo during the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake.” Proc., Behavior of Steel Structures in Seismic Area (STESSA), CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Kubo, T., Hisada, Y., Murakami, M., Kosuge, F., and Hamano, K. (2011). “Applications of an earthquake early warning system and a real-time strong motion monitoring system in emergency response in a high-rise building.” Soil Dyn. Earthquake Eng., 31(2), 231–239.
Miranda, E., and Reyes, C. (2002). “Approximate lateral drift demands in multi-story buildings with nonuniform stiffness.” J. Struct. Eng., 840–849.
Miranda, E., and Taghavi-Ardakan, S. (2005). “Approximate floor acceleration demands in multistory buildings. I. Forumulation.” J. Struct. Eng., 203–211.
Raiffa, H., and Schlaifer, R. (1961). Applied statistical decision theory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, MA.
Taghavi-Ardakan, S. (2006). “Probabilistic seismic assessment of floor acceleration demands in multi-story buildings.” Ph.D. thesis, Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA.
Tipping, M. (2001). “Sparse Bayesian learning and the relevance vector machine.” J. Mach. Learn. Res., 1(3), 211–244.
Von Neumann, J., and Morgenstern, O. (1944). Theory of games and economic behavior, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Wu, S., Beck, J., and Heaton, T. (2013). “ePAD: Earthquake probability-based automated decision-making framework for earthquake early warning.” Comput. -Aided Civ. Infrastruct. Eng., 28(10), 737–752.
Yahoo News. (2013). “Strong earthquake rattles Taiwan, no reports of casualties.” 〈http://news.yahoo.com/earthquake-6-7-magnitude-strikes-taiwan-usgs-122240396.html〉 (Apr. 9, 2014).
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 1 • January 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 6, 2014
Accepted: May 12, 2015
Published online: Jul 3, 2015
Discussion open until: Dec 3, 2015
Published in print: Jan 1, 2016
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.