Developing Site Specific Ground Motions to Satisfy the New Chapter 16 of ASCE 7-2016 which Codifies the West Coast Tall Building Seismic Analysis Requirements
 
The Consortium of Organization for Strong Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS) will be holding its Annual Meeting and Technical Session at the Crowne Plaza Hotel San Francisco Airport in Burlingame, California, on Friday, November 14th. The Crowne Plaza SFO is conveniently located at 1177 Airport Boulevard one block east of the 101 Freeway. The Crowne Plaza has a complimentary shuttle that runs every 30 minutes from San Francisco Airport. Information on the airport shuttle is available on their website. For those of you coming by BART, the shuttle stop is located in front of the International Terminal on the upper level adjacent to the SFO BART Station.
 
This year’s Technical Session is again being co-sponsored by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Center (PEER) and the California Geological Survey (CGS). Registration for the Technical Session will begin at 7:30 am (with coffee and pastries). The Technical Session will begin promptly at 8:30 am with a lunch break at Noon. The COSMOS Annual meeting will start at 12:30 pm and adjourn at 1:00 pm. The Technical Session will then reconvene and end at 5:00 pm. As in previous years, a no-host cocktail hour will follow.
 
This year’s Technical Session will primarily focus on the development of site-specific ground motions that satisfy the new requirements of brand-new Chapters 16 and 19 of ASCE 7-16, which are finalizing development. Many of these requirements are somewhat vague in the areas of selection, scaling, and orientation of ground motions in both the near and far fields. The Chapter 16 codifies requirements for nonlinear response history analysis and codifies tall building analysis requirements that are currently being used for tall buildings on the West Coast. Chapter 19 codifies new requirements for soil-structure interaction and base-slab averaging that is also used by engineers to reduce seismic demands. The goal for this session is to have the authors of these Chapters explain the intent of the requirements and how they are expecting the ground motions to be developed and applied. Other areas that will be discussed include site-specific max direction factors, site coefficients, and vertical direction ground motions. Speakers on these subjects include Curt Haselton, Jack Baker, Norm Abrahamson, Jon Stewart, Yousef Borzognia, Ron Hamburger, C.B. Crouse, and John Hooper. As in years’ past, the last part of the Technical Session will include a lively panel session that will allow a forum for discussion.
 
Registration fees are $200 for COSMOS and PEER members, $240 for non-members, and a special student rate of $40; lunch and refreshments are included. Program details for the COSMOS Annual Meeting and Technical Session are available at the COSMOS website at www.cosmos-eq.org.