Measuring Similarity between Site-Specific Data and Records from Other Sites
Publication: ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
Volume 6, Issue 2
Abstract
This paper proposes a Bayesian method of measuring the similarity between a set of site-specific data and individual records in a generic geotechnical database. All data are assumed to be multivariate, uncertain, unique, sparse, and incomplete (MUSIC). A similarity measure is proposed, and the effectiveness of the proposed similarity measure is illustrated by considering a specific clay database and a specific site in Norway that is outside the database. The records are weighted by their similarity measures and combined with the limited site-specific data to construct a quasi-site-specific transformation model based on a more restricted and more relevant coverage of geotechnical characteristics relevant to the site.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request, including the CLAY/10/7490 database and the MATLAB codes for running the Gibbs sampler and for evaluating the similarity measure S.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the members of the TC304 Committee on Engineering Practice of Risk Assessment & Management of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering for developing the database 304dB (304dB 2018) used in this study and making it available for scientific inquiry. We are also grateful to the reviewers for the comments that have improved this paper significantly. Last but not least, the second author extends his appreciation to the Institute for Risk and Reliability, Leibniz University, and the funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for providing the support to complete this paper.
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Published In
ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
Volume 6 • Issue 2 • June 2020
Copyright
©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 17, 2018
Accepted: Aug 30, 2019
Published online: Feb 11, 2020
Published in print: Jun 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Jul 11, 2020
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