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Optimum Earthquake Design Coefficients Based on Probabilistic Seismic Hazard

Analyses. Theory and Applications

Article  in  Earthquake Spectra · June 2017

DOI: 10.1193/110116EQS189M

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 1 Optimum earthquake design coefficients
2 based on probabilistic seismic hazard analyses.
3 Theory and applications

4 Mario Ordaz,a) Mario A. Salgado-Gálvez,b) Luis E. Pérez-Rocha,c)

5 Omar D. Cardona,d) M.EERI and Ulises Mena-Hernándezc)

6 It is common practice to define the seismic design coefficients for earthquake

7 resistant building codes by choosing a fixed return period, leaving aside
8 considerations about structural vulnerability and acceptable risk levels. This paper
9 reviews the theory of the optimum design, introduced from almost the beginning
10 of the formal probabilistic seismic hazard analysis framework and presents the
11 results of its application in Mexico and Colombia using national seismic hazard
12 models for the two countries. The obtained optimum design coefficients are
13 compared with the ones obtained with the fixed return period approach. Results
14 are presented with the aim of starting to discuss alternative approaches to select in
15 a more sensible way the seismic design values included in the building codes.

16 INTRODUCTION

17 Earthquake resistant building codes are documents that specify the minimum design and
18 construction requirements for structures to withstand earthquake forces that are considered
19 large enough. At some point of the process of drafting a building code, someone has to
20 decide what “large enough” means; it is common practice to consider that a force is large
21 enough if it is associated to a sufficiently large return period or, alternatively, to a sufficiently

a)
Instituto de Ingeniería, UNAM, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán 04510, DF, México
b)
Centre Internacional de Metodes Numerics en Enginyeria, CIMNE, Barcelona, 08012, Spain
c)
Instituto Nacional de Electricidad y Energías Limpias, Cuernavaca, 62490, Mexico.
d)
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Campus Palogrande, IDEA. Cra. 27 No. 64-60, Manizales, Colombia
22 small probability of exceedance in a given time span, usually of the order of the expected
23 lifetime of the structure.

24 It is common that for some classes of structures –for instance, all buildings of residential,
25 commercial and industrial use in a city – the chosen return period of the design forces is the
26 same, typically around 500 years, regardless of the vulnerability characteristics of the
27 structural classes. The rationale behind selecting the same return period for large classes of
28 structures is that all structures should be facing the same risk. However, it is easy to prove
29 (see, for example, Hadjian 2002) that the use of a fixed return period to design structures that
30 have different performance characteristics, or are subjected to different seismic hazard
31 regimes, yields to structures that have different reliabilities, so they are, in practice, not
32 facing a uniform risk level.

33 Malhotra (2008) introduced a design approach in which two goals should be met: on
34 individual basis, the design force of any building should not be exceeded more frequently
35 than a specified return period, while, collectively, a fixed amount of buildings in the region of
36 interest should not experience a collective exceedance with a return period shorter than a
37 given value. Again, even when this approach aimed to controlling the risk faced by a
38 portfolio of buildings, and not by a single building, the idea of designing for fixed return
39 periods prevails, although there is an intention of designing for uniform risk levels.

40 Therefore, the next step in search of risk uniformity has been to select a fixed value of
41 reliability and design to attain it. This, in some sense, has led to the so-called risk-targeted
42 hazard maps in which, by combining the outcomes of a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis
43 (PSHA) with a quantitative representation of an specific damage state (usually collapse), the
44 design coefficients are set by finding a uniform collapse probability within a given time span,
45 defining therefore, in an explicit way, an acceptable risk level (see, for example, Luco et al.
46 2007). However, again, the rationale behind the risk-targeted approach relies on the risk
47 uniformity, that is, the need that all buildings face the same risk, regardless of the costs
48 involved in attaining the desired risk level.

49 More recently, the idea of optimum design was explored by Crowley et al. (2012), who
50 proposed an approach that is somehow similar to the one that will be proposed here.
51 However, as will be shown later in this paper, the quantity chosen by Crowley et al. (2012) to
52 be minimized in search for optimum design is not an adequate measure of the life-cycle cost

2
53 of the structures analyzed, whereas the one proposed by Esteva (1967) and Rosenblueth
54 (1976a), and used herein, is indeed a good measure of this cost.

55 Leaving aside the difficulties of choosing the risk level that all buildings should be
56 facing, an observation that came out very early in the history of PSHA (Esteva 1967; Esteva
57 1970; Rosenblueth 1976a) was that it is not economically efficient to design all buildings to
58 face the same hazard levels or even the same risk levels. Already in Esteva (1967), perhaps
59 the first paper written to formalize PSHA (McGuire 1995), we can see the essential ideas of
60 the concept of optimum design, which, in a nutshell, claims that one should buy lateral
61 strength when it is cheap, and be tight-fisted when strength is expensive. As we will see later,
62 remembering an early reasoning by Esteva (1967) and Rosenblueth (1976a), this idea yields
63 to the result that, for a given class of structures, the higher the hazard, the smaller the
64 optimum design return period. In other words, in areas of low seismic hazard one should
65 design for very long return periods –because it is inexpensive to do so- while shorter return
66 periods should be used for areas of higher hazard. Although intellectually appealing, as far as
67 we know, this idea has only been used in Mexican national earthquake resistant building
68 codes.

69 In the following paragraphs we will describe the basic ideas of optimum design and we
70 will show, with simplified examples for two countries, how they can be applied in order to
71 obtain seismic design coefficients that are optimum in the sense of minimizing the costs
72 associated to the life cycle of a class of structures. Finally, after showing these results, we
73 will discuss some of its implications and shortcomings, in an effort to pointing to some future
74 research areas.

75 MODEL FOR OPTIMUM DESIGN

76 This approach was first proposed by Esteva (1967), Rosenblueth (1976b) and Whitman
77 and Cornell (1976). Its main assumptions are the following: 1) future earthquake occurrences
78 follow a Poissonian process; 2) the initial cost of the building, as well as the cost of future
79 losses, depend only on one intensity measure, c, which is the base shear demand; 3) every
80 time that the seismic demand, c, exceeds the capacity of the building, cs, there is a total loss;
81 and 4) once the building has been completely lost, its strength is fully and immediately
82 restituted.

3
 83 The optimum design is the one that, provided the above mentioned assumptions, yields
84 the minimum expected present value of the decision of using a specific design coefficient, cs.
85 The costs involved in the life-cycle evaluation are the initial construction cost, CI, and the
86 expected present value of the future losses due to earthquakes, CFL. The total cost of the
87 decision of using cs as the design capacity, CT, is then given by

88 ; (1)

89 note that all the costs are explicit functions of the design coefficient, cs.

90 Concerning the initial cost, we will assume that if the building is designed to withstand
91 only gravitational loads, at cost C0, there is already a small amount of lateral strength, c0,
92 which does not involve additional costs. In view of this, the construction cost will be
93 expressed in the following form:

94 . (2)

95 where K, c0 and  are constants that define the growth of construction cost with lateral
96 strength. This functional form was originally used by Jara and Rosenblueth (1989) and as we
97 will show later, the cost model developed for Colombia in this paper confirms its suitability.

98 The expected present value of the future losses of the building due to earthquakes is also
99 a function of the design coefficient. Rosenblueth (1976a) showed that, under the assumptions
100 we have made:

101 1 (3)

102 where SL is a factor that accounts for secondary losses, ν(cs) is the exceedance rate of a
103 seismic demand that is numerically equal to the building capacity, and  is the discount rate
104 that accounts for the value of money in the future.

105 In Equation 3, the term 1 measures the secondary losses, that is, the
106 consequences of the failure of the structure beyond its own construction cost. If SL=0, then
107 the loss due to any event is simply the initial construction cost, CI. A large value of SL implies
108 that the secondary losses are considerable, since the total loss might amount to (1+SL) times
109 the initial construction cost. Benson (2012) presents a list of values of SL determined for past
110 events in different countries and Wisner (2003) discusses the need of factors of this type in
111 order to analyze resilience.
4
112 In general, SL should perhaps be a function of the severity of the event, measured with cs,
113 since experience indicates that secondary losses are large only in case of strong earthquakes.
114 The following functional form could be used for this purpose:

115 1 Φ ln , (4)

116 where SLMAX, cc and s are parameters that define the growth of the importance of the
117 secondary losses as a function of earthquake severity, and (.) is the standard normal
118 probability distribution. In equation 4, for very small earthquake demands, cs tends to zero, so
119 SL(cs) tends to unity; hence the total losses are equal to just the construction costs, that is, the
120 total losses are equal to the direct losses. For large earthquake demands, cs tends to infinity,
121 so SL(cs) tends to 1+SLMAX. Thus, parameter cc is an indication of the border between small
122 and large earthquake demands. Note that, since one of the explicit purposes of building codes
123 is the preservation of life, SL could conceivable account for the value of lives lost as a
124 consequence of building failure. However, this would imply finding an equivalent monetary
125 value for a life lost, a difficult topic normally surrounded by moral debate (Salgado-Gálvez et
126 al. 2016a). In any case, indirect losses can always be more precisely evaluated for specific
127 cases; see, for instance, Calvi (2013).

128 Replacing equation 3 into equation 1 we find that the total cost associated to the decision
129 of using a given design coefficient is given by:

1 1 (5)

130 Optimum design is one in which cs is chosen so that the right-hand side of equation 5 is
131 minimum. The right hand side of equation 5 is the expected utility of the decision of
132 choosing cs as the design coefficient. It could be argued that the optimum decision would be
133 the one that minimizes not the expected utility of the decision, but an arbitrary percentile. For
134 instance, one could try to minimize the present value of the median costs, or the present value
135 of the 84th percentile of the costs. However, Von-Neumann and Morgenstern (1953) proved
136 that if the decision maker is rational, in the sense of adhering to the axioms of rational
137 behavior, then he/she would try to minimize the expected value of the costs, and not any
138 other of its statistical properties. Therefore, the choice of minimizing other percentiles of the
139 future –uncertain- costs would imply a certain level of irrationality.

5
140 Note that both members of equation 5 can be normalized with respect to the minimum
141 initial cost, C0. Thus,

1 1 (6)

142 From equation 2 we obtain that

1
(7)
1

143 where  = K/C0. Therefore, the variation of construction cost with design capacity can be
144 described using three parameters: c0 and .

145 It is worth noting that, under the assumptions made, it can be shown (see Appendix) that
146 the average annual loss (AAL) associated to the decision of using cs as the design value,
147 expressed as a function of the exposed value, is numerically equal to –and has the same units
148 than– ν(cs), the exceedance rate of the design value. Also, under Poissonian occurrences and
149 a simple insurance system, in which the premium paid is equal to the AAL, the present value
150 of all the premiums paid would be ν(cs)/ . Thus, equation 5 can also be written in terms of
151 the AAL:

1 (8)

152 This equation illustrates the differences between our approach and the one proposed by
153 Crowley et al. (2012). The first difference is the presence of factor SL, which accounts for
154 indirect losses. This factor should be present because, in general, building codes aim at
155 protecting other things besides the repair costs. The second difference is that, even
156 disregarding indirect losses, that is, setting SL to zero, the quantity to minimize is not the sum
157 of the initial cost plus the AAL, as proposed by Crowley at el. (2012; their equation 2.2) but
158 the sum of the initial cost plus several times the average annual loss. How many times? Well,
159 it depends on the discount rate, which measures the value of the money with time. In many
160 financial transactions worldwide, discount rates are in the order of 0.03 to 0.05/year. With
161 these values of , an adequate measure of the cost of the life cycle of the structure would be
162 the initial cost plus 20 to 30 times the average annual loss, but not the initial cost plus once
163 the AAL.

6
164 The following graph illustrates the computation of the optimum design value. Figure 1
165 shows, as functions of design capacity, three costs: the initial cost, CI, the cost of future
166 losses due to earthquakes, CFL, and the total cost, CT, for a site with seismic hazard described
167 by the following curve:

0.001
(9)

168 with r=1.5; as we will see shortly, this is a site with low seismicity. We have used c0=0.05,
169 =0.111, =1.1, =0.05/year and a constant value of SL=12. This value was used by Ordaz et
170 al. (1989) as representative of the cost of indirect losses during the 1985 Mexico City
171 earthquake.

172 In this case, as shown in Figure 1, the optimum design coefficient, that is, the one that
173 yields the minimum cost, is 0.115, which corresponds to a return period of about 1230 years.
174 Design coefficients smaller than the optimum would lead to a situation in which losses due to
175 earthquakes are too frequent; higher values, in turn, lead to designs that are unjustifiable
176 expensive.

177 An interesting result of optimum design is the following. Assume that the building used
178 in the previous example is moved to an area of higher seismicity, represented with a curve
179 like that of equation 9 but with r=1. The optimum coefficient turns out to be now 0.266
180 which, as expected, is larger than the optimum value found for the low seismicity site. But
181 the return period of the optimum design coefficient, that is, the optimum return period, is now
182 266 years instead of 1230 years, as it was for the low-seismicity site. Therefore, for any given
183 building, the optimum return period changes depending on seismic hazard, and optimum
184 design always produces optimum return periods that are shorter for the high seismicity areas
185 and longer for the low seismicity regions. This is illustrated in Figure 1, where we present
186 results for the same building located in high- and low-seismicity sites. Evidently, optimum
187 design for the high-seismicity site is achieved at a higher cost (3.08) than design at the low-
188 seismicity site (1.39).

7
 1.E+01

1.E+00

Normalized costs

CI
1.E-01 CFL, low seismicity
CT, low seismicity
CFL, high seismicity
CT, high seismicity

1.E-02
0.01 0.10 1.00
Design capacity
189
190 Figure 1. Initial cost (CI), cost of future losses (CFL) and total cost (CT) as functions of design
191 capacity, for low and high seismicity zones

192 Table 1 shows optimum design coefficients, optimum return periods and minimum costs
193 for the same building but located at sites with different levels of seismic hazard, indicated by
194 different values of r (see equation 9). We can see that, depending on seismic hazard level, the
195 optimum return period could be anything between 266 and 1234 years. From the point of
196 view of optimum design, there seems to be no reason to use a constant return period to design
197 the same structure across an extended region.

198 There are, of course, practical limits to the conclusion of the previous paragraph. On the
199 one hand, it would be highly inadequate to accept failures too frequently, because usually
200 human lives are involved. It could be argued that these losses could also be integrated into
201 the secondary losses, so as to account for them (Salgado-Gálvez et al. 2016a), but this
202 integration has proven to be extremely difficult. Therefore, a minimum return period should
203 be specified (see, for instance, Crowley et al. 2012). On the other hand, design for very long
204 return periods, which would occur in regions of low seismic hazard, implies very strong
205 extrapolations in hazard estimation, which makes the return period itself very unreliable.
206 Therefore, either a minimum design coefficient, or a maximum return period, should be
207 specified. A natural choice for minimum design coefficient would be c0 since, as indicated in
208 equation 2, designing for such a low capacity comes for free.

8
209 Figure 1 shows another interesting feature of the approach we are presenting. It can be
210 appreciated that, although it has only one theoretical minimum value, the total cost curve is
211 rather flat in the vicinity of its minimum. This means that, in practice, there is not a unique
212 optimum value but rather an optimal region in which the selected design value should lie.
213 This is, in our opinion, an advantage of the approach. The contrary, that is, a very sharp cost
214 curve indicating a clear minimum, would tell us that we better be very sure about the
215 parameters chosen for the analysis because small mistakes in one of them could yield a large
216 deviation from the optimum and, therefore, a large waste of resources. Also, the fact that a
217 range of design values is near-to-optimal gives flexibility in the specification of design levels
218 for building code purposes.

219 Table 1. Results of optimum design for a building located at sites with different levels of seismic
220 hazard

Hazard r Optimum design Optimum return Minimum cost

level (see Eq.9) coefficient period (years)
Higher 1.0 0.266 266 3.08
1.1 0.225 387 2.41
1.2 0.190 544 1.99
1.3 0.161 739 1.71
1.4 0.136 971 1.52
Lower 1.5 0.115 1234 1.39
221

222 In the following sections we will illustrate the application of these concepts to two
223 countries, Mexico and Colombia. The case of Mexico is interesting because Mexican national
224 earthquake resistant building codes have never specified a constant design return period, but
225 have rather specified design coefficients that intend to be optimum, so they correspond to
226 return periods that vary across the country. The case of the Colombian national earthquake
227 resistant building codes is fairly different, since all of them, even its most updated version
228 (AIS 2010), have specified a constant return period equal to 475 years. It will be interesting
229 anyhow to see how the design coefficients change if optimum design ideas are applied to this
230 country. Both in Mexico and Colombia the PSHA was developed using CRISIS computer
231 program (Ordaz et al. 2013) and the hazard models correspond to the official and most recent
232 ones (Salgado-Gálvez et al. 2016b) developed for establishing the seismic design
233 coefficients.

9
234 It is worth mentioning that the analysis and design methods specified in Mexican and
235 Colombian codes for simple structures as the ones we are dealing with are not very different
236 to those contemplated in Eurocode or the various American standards. In both codes, the
237 main design method applicable for simple structures would include the analysis under lateral
238 forces reduced by to ductility and over-strength, and verification that, under reduced forces,
239 the structure remains elastic.

240 THE CASE OF MEXICO

241 Between 2010 and 2015, the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (Federal Electricity
242 Commission), Mexico’s national power company, updated its seismic design provisions
243 (Capítulo de Diseño por Sismo del Manual de Diseño de Obras Civiles) which, in practice,
244 serves as a national earthquake resistant building code for large portions of the country
245 (CDS-MDOC 2015). As part of this update, new seismic hazard maps were developed for the
246 country; see Tena-Colunga et al. (2009) for a description of this building code and its
247 importance for Mexico´s earthquake design community. Figure 2 (left) shows the seismic
248 hazard map, for rock sites, corresponding to the T=0.15 s spectral ordinate, for a return
249 period of 500 years.

250 As an example, we will try to determine optimum design values for a class of structures
251 whose response is indicated by the spectral acceleration at a structural period, T, equal to 0.15
252 sec. This means, for instance, low-rise (1-2 stories) reinforced concrete dwellings. Since the
253 hazard curve at any site within Mexico is available from the PSHA, the only parameters
254 missing are those related with costs of indirect losses and construction costs. For the costs of
255 indirect losses we will assume a constant value of SL=12, while we will use =0.05/year.
256 Regarding construction costs, we will set c0 at 0.02, after consulting with practicing structural
257 engineers that indicated that this is the level of lateral strength that this class of building
258 attains when it is designed only for gravitational loads. Concerning  and , we will infer
259 them from the current practices in Mexico, reasoning in the following way: we assume that
260 design coefficients currently used in two cities in Mexico, Acapulco (cs=1.2) and Mexico
261 City (cs=0.32) are optimum at rock sites for the class of structures under study; therefore,
262 since both sites have very different seismic hazard levels, the design values do not
263 correspond to the same return period. This assumption yields to values of =0.019 and
264 =1.407, that will be applied throughout the country in order to obtain optimum design

10
265 coefficients for the whole territory. Using these parameters, we obtain the optimum spectral
266 accelerations at T=0.15 s shown in Figure 2 (right).

267
268 Figure 2. Left: hazard map of Mexico (rock sites), depicting spectral accelerations at T=0.15 s for
269 a return period of 500 years. Right: optimum design spectral accelerations at T=0.15; these
270 accelerations correspond to variable return periods. All accelerations are in g

271 Comparing both maps of Figure 2 it can be noticed that the map of optimum spectral
272 accelerations is a sort of smoothed version of the map of spectral accelerations associated to a
273 fixed return period. This can be better appreciated in Figure 3 (left), where we show a cross
274 section of spectral values, optimum and associated to fixed return periods, obtained at
275 longitude -99o, which approximately passes through both Acapulco and Mexico City; for
276 reference, exceedance rate curves for the appropriate spectral acceleration are presented for
277 Mexico City and Acapulco are also shown (right).
1.E+03
2.5
Acapulco
Exceedance rate (1/year) and Normalized Cost

Optimum design coefficient 1.E+02

2.0 Tr=500 years

Mexico City 1.E+01
Tr=180 years

1.5 1.E+00
Sa (g)

1.E-01
1.0

1.E-02

0.5
1.E-03
0.01 0.10 1.00 10.00
Sa (g)
0.0
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 Hazard - Mexico City Normalized cost - Mexico City

278 Latitude (degrees) Hazard - Acapulco Normalized cost - Acapulco

279 Figure 3. Left: Spectral accelerations at T=0.15 s of three different kinds: optimum, and
280 associated to return periods, Tr, of 180 and 500 years. The sites belong to a cross section of Mexico
281 across longitude -99°. Right: Exceedance rates of spectral accelerations at T=0.15 s and normalized
282 costs, for Mexico City and Acapulco

283

11
284 In Figure 3 (left), we chose to draw the accelerations associated to 500 and 180 years of
285 return period because, in the first case, 500 years is a world-wide, common reference for
286 design values, whereas in the second case, 180 years corresponds to the return period of the
287 optimum design coefficient of 1.2 for the case of Acapulco; it is worth remembering that we
288 assumed at the beginning that 1.2 is optimum for Acapulco. So the optimum design
289 coefficient moves from 1.2 in Acapulco to 0.35 in Mexico City, which happens to have a
290 return period of about 500 years. For sites further inland, the return period is longer than 500
291 years, which we know because the optimum design values are larger than those associated to
292 500 years. How longer are the return periods for sites further inland? The answer is in
293 Figures 4. In Figure 4 (left) we show a cross section, also across longitude -99°, with the
294 values of the optimum return periods. It must be noted that, for the reasons already
295 mentioned above, we chose to clip the return period to 5000 years. In turn, Figure 4 (right)
296 depicts a map of the optimum return period for the whole country.

2,500

Acapulco
2,000
Mexico City
Optimum mean return period (years)

Optimum mean return period

1,500

1,000

500

0
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
297 Latitude (degrees)

298 Figure 4. Left: Optimum return period at sites that belong to a cross section across longitude -99°.
299 Right: Optimum return period for a spectral acceleration at T=0.15 sec. Return periods have been
300 clipped to 5000 years

301 From Figures 4 it can be appreciated that the optimum return period moves more or less
302 smoothly from 180 to 700 years as we move from latitudes 16° to 20.5°. Then, it becomes
303 optimum to design for very long return periods, as we get to the moderate- and low-
304 seismicity regions of the country. Optimum design indicates that to design for long return
305 periods in low-hazard regions is optimum because it is cheap to do so.

306 THE CASE OF COLOMBIA

307 Earthquake resistant building codes have been of mandatory use in Colombia since 1984
308 when its first version was published. Since then, the National code has had two updates, one

12
309 in 1998 and the last one in 2010. The last revision derived in the NSR-10 building code,
310 which updated the document that had been in use since 1998. Within this update, new
311 seismic hazard maps were developed for the country (Salgado-Gálvez et al. 2010) from
312 where, choosing a fixed return period of approximately 500 years, the two seismic design
313 coefficients required for the functional form of the elastic design spectra specified in the
314 NSR-10 were determined.

315 As for the case of Mexico, we will try to determine optimum design values for the same
316 class of structures (low-rise reinforced concrete dwellings) with the difference that in this
317 case, a specific construction cost model was developed to determine the values of coefficients
318  and . Using the same criteria as in Mexico, c0 has been set equal to 0.02. Then, we varied
319 cs in increments of 0.05, and designed the two-story reinforced concrete building complying
320 with the requirements of the Colombian earthquake resistant building code. For each value cs
321 we computed the initial cost of the building, obtaining a function later fitted to equation 7,
322 yielding to values of =0.022 and =1.320. Figure 5 shows the comparison between the
323 estimated and the adjusted cost models for this class of structures in Colombia. Although
324 being calculated in a very different manner than in Mexico, the obtained values for the  and
325  coefficients have the same order of magnitude.

2.6

2.4
Cost model

2.2
Adjusted cost model

2.0
Normalized cost

1.8

1.6

1.4

1.2

1.0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0.50
cs
326
327 Figure 5. Construction cost variation as a function of cs for low-rise reinforced concrete
328 dwellings in Colombia

13
329 To account for the secondary losses SL=12 was chosen using the same reasoning as in
330 Mexico, whereas to consider the value of money in time, =0.05/year was again used. Figure
331 6 (left) shows the seismic hazard map for Colombia, on rock sites, corresponding to T=0.15 s
332 spectral ordinate for 500 years return period whereas the optimum spectral accelerations
333 obtained for Colombia, for T=0.15 s, are shown in Figure 6 (right).

334
335 Figure 6. Left: Hazard map of Colombia (rock sites), depicting spectral accelerations at T=0.15 s
336 for a return period of 500 years. Right: optimum design spectral accelerations at T=0.15; these
337 accelerations correspond to variable return periods. All accelerations are in g

338 Again, if left and right maps in Figure 6 are compared, it can be seen that in the latter a
339 smoother transition between accelerations is obtained. It is interesting to see that for the most
340 important cities in Colombia optimum accelerations are higher than the ones currently
341 established in the NSR-10 building code under the constant return period approach, as shown
342 in Table 2.

343

14
344 Table 2. Comparison of fixed return period and optimum seismic design coefficients for some
345 cities in Colombia

City Optimum design NSR-10 design

coefficient coefficient
Bogotá D.C. 0.591 0.375
Pereira 0.701 0.625
Medellín 0.648 0.375
Cali 0.711 0.625
Manizales 0.675 0.625
Bucaramanga 0.642 0.625
Santa Marta 0.560 0.375
346

347 Figure 7 shows a cross section of three different spectral acceleration values: optimum
348 and associated to two fixed values of return periods obtained for latitude 4.5º, which passes
349 through Bogotá and Pereira. Details about the seismic hazard results for these cities in
350 Colombia can be found in AIS (2010).

1.2
Pereira Optimum design coefficient

1.0 Tr=500 years

Tr=300 years

0.8
Bogotá D.C.
Sa (g)

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
-77 -76 -75 -74 -73 -72
351 Longitude (degrees)

352 Figure 7. Spectral accelerations at T=0.15 s of three different kinds: optimum and associated to
353 return periods, Tr, of 300 and 500 years. The sites belong to a cross section across latitude 4.5°.

354 In Figure 7 the accelerations associated to fixed return periods of 500 and 300 years were
355 chosen because the first corresponds to the world-wide benchmark value for PSHA whereas
356 the second corresponds to the lowest optimum return period calculated under this approach in
357 Colombia, which occurs in some parts of the southern Pacific Coast and along some parts of
358 the Eastern Cordillera, where seismic hazard is considerably higher than in the rest of the

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359 country. To have an idea of how the return periods of the optimum spectral accelerations vary
360 in Colombia, Figure 8 (left) shows the variation of the optimum return period for a spectral
361 acceleration at T=0.15 s along latitude 4.5° whereas Figure 8 (right) depicts a map of the
362 optimum return period for the whole country. As in Mexico, and due to the same reasons, the
363 return periods are clipped at 5000 years.

2,500
Optimum mean return period

Pereira
2,000
Optimum mean return period (years)

Bogotá D.C.

1,500

1,000

500

0
-77 -76 -75 -74 -73 -72
Longitude (degrees)

364 Figure 8. Left: Optimum return period at sites that belong to a cross section across latitude 4.5°.
365 Right: Optimum return period for a spectral acceleration at T=0.15 sec. Return periods have been
366 clipped to 5000 years

367 SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS

368 So far we have presented results assuming that all parameters required to compute the
369 life-cycle cost of the structure are perfectly known. We will now show, taking the case of
370 Colombia as an example, how optimum design coefficients might change if the values of
371 some of the main parameters are modified.

372 First, we will modify the relation between construction cost and design capacity. In
373 general terms, this relation is reasonably well constrained for a given type of structures.
374 Therefore, we have allowed for a variation of plus or minus 10% around the original values,
375 given in Figure 5. Results are presented in Figure 9, which shows optimum design
376 coefficients for sites along latitude 4.5o, calculated for the new cost functions, compared to
377 the ones originally computed. Secondly, we will try to see the effect of the discount rate, for
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378 which we will compute results for 3% and 7% (instead of 5%, as in the main text). Then, we
379 will explore the effect of changing the relative value of the indirect losses, for which we will
380 set SL=5 (see equation 3) and not 12, as in the main text. And finally, we will see how the
381 optimum results change if instead of using the true initial cost relation (squares in Figure 5)
382 we use an approximation to this curve by the parametric shape shown in equation 7
383 (continuous line in Figure 5).

1.1 -10% cost

+10% cost
Pereira 3% discount rate
7% discount rate
1.0 SL=5
Estimated ε and α values

0.9

0.8
Bogotá D.C.
Sa (g)

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3
-77 -77 -76 -76 -75 -75 -74 -74 -73 -73 -72
Longitude (degrees)
384
385 Figure 9. Optimum design values in Colombia, at sites that belong to a cross section across
386 latitude 4.5°. We present here the results of a sensitivity analysis

387

388 As can be noted from Figure 9, reasonable errors on the estimation of the construction
389 cost have little influence on the value of the optimum design coefficient.

390 The effect of changes in the discount rate are particularly interesting. This rate measures
391 the value of money of financial transactions, but it can also be interpreted as measure of the
392 importance we give to failures that would take place in the future. If  is very high then the
393 cost of future losses will be dominated by just the events that take place in the near future. In
394 turn, low values of  indicate that we care very much about what happens even in the distant
395 future, which makes optimum the use of larger design values. In the limit, a null discount rate
396 implies and infinite expected present value of the losses, since the losses are not discounted
397 and they accumulate without bounds. In this situation, the only possible optimum design
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398 strategy would be to use all resources available in any single structure (infinite design
399 coefficients), which does not make much sense.

400 The effect of SL is also remarkable. If indirect losses (including perhaps loss of life) are
401 relatively small (SL=5), then optimum design criteria would yield to the use of smaller design
402 coefficients that the ones that would have been obtained for a larger value of SL=12.

403 DISCUSSION

404 We have shown the results of applying optimum design, an old concept, first developed
405 by Esteva (1967), Rosenblueth (1976b) and Whitman and Cornell (1976), to contemporary
406 seismic hazard maps of Mexico and Colombia. The most striking result of applying these
407 ideas is the fact that using for design a constant return period across extended regions, a
408 common practice these days, is not optimum.

409 In Mexico, we start from assuming that design coefficients presently used in Acapulco
410 and in Mexico City are optimum for a class of structures with fundamental period equal to
411 0.15 s. Then, we infer the parameters that control the constructions costs, and apply them to
412 the rest of the country. In a way, this approach is similar to the one that, informally, was
413 carried out many years ago, when the first probabilistic seismic hazard maps were drafted. At
414 that time, design coefficients already existed, and had been chosen years before. When
415 probabilistic hazard maps came out, it turned out that the design coefficients for a certain
416 class of structures coincided with those associated to a return period of about 500 years in
417 California. From this observation, it was inferred that a return period of 500 years was
418 adequate, perhaps optimum in the minds of the engineers of the time, which led to the belief
419 that 500 years was adequate more or less everywhere.

420 For Colombia a specific construction cost model was developed for the same class of
421 structures, finding values very similar to those obtained in Mexico. Optimum design
422 coefficient results obtained for Colombia using the model presented herein yield higher
423 values than the ones established in the NSR-10 building code for most of the main cities.
424 This means that although the code requires a minimum safety level for the dwellings, seismic
425 safety that is relatively cheap is not being bought and therefore, designs are not optimum
426 from an economical perspective.

427 The structural model that is used throughout this analysis is certainly too simplistic at
428 least for the two following reasons. The first is the assumption that losses are null if the
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429 building capacity is not exceeded and total once that capacity is exceeded. All contemporary
430 vulnerability models recognize that there is a continuous transition between null and total
431 damage as a function of the earthquake demand. In the Appendix to this paper we have
432 included a more general set of equations that would have to be used for the cost analysis if a
433 more refined vulnerability model were to be deemed appropriate. While the equations of the
434 Appendix are of broader use, they necessarily have more parameters and they lose some of
435 the beauty that comes with simplicity. That is the reason why we decided to leave in the main
436 text the simplified version which is, at the same time, easier to digest. The second reason is
437 related to the use of a single parameter to measure structural capacity and seismic demand.
438 The simple model we have in mind is that cs is the elastic acceleration given in the design
439 spectrum for a period of, in our case, 0.15 s. Once cs is chosen, the structure is designed
440 according to code provisions, which generally would include reduction of cs by ductility and
441 over-strength factors, structural analysis under reduced loads and verification that, under
442 reduced loads, the structure remains elastic; the cost of the resulting structure is then
443 computed, in order to see how it changes as cs grows. In this simplified design version
444 (which, by the way, is widely used for the collapse limit state in seismic design codes around
445 the World), if cs is exceeded, the structure fails. The real design process is clearly more
446 complex, but our main intention is to illustrate the main qualitative indications of the ideas of
447 optimum design rather than giving guidelines for actual optimum design processes.

448 We note that to arrive to equation 3 (see also equation A8 in the Appendix) the addition
449 of the losses in time is made from zero to infinity. This means, at least in theory, that we are
450 interested in the losses that take place very far away in the future, which might not be a
451 reasonable assumption for structures with a limited expected life. One of the consequences of
452 this situation is that the optimum design level should depend on the expected life of the
453 structure. In our approach, this could be solved in two ways. The first is to limit the integrals
454 in Equation A8 to the structure´s expected life and not to infinity; this can be done, but results
455 in cumbersome functions with which the beauty of a simple analytical solution is lost. The
456 second way is to choose a discount rate that makes irrelevant the losses that take place after
457 the expected life of the structure. The longer this life, the smaller the discount rate, which
458 introduces the desired dependence of optimum level on expected life of the structure.

459 Throughout this paper we have implicitly assumed that the dominant peril in the whole
460 two countries examined is earthquake. In reality, other perils might also contribute to the risk

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461 and, therefore, the proposed optimization should be performed for the combined effect of all
462 perils. Although this has not been pursued in this paper, there are not, in our opinion,
463 conceptual objections to this multiple-peril optimization.

464 Conceptually, the approach presented here is applicable not only to simple structures, but
465 also to structures with medium or long structural period, provided that the correct intensity
466 measure –the spectral acceleration corresponding to the predominant structural period- is
467 used in each case, together with is corresponding hazard curve. It is true, however, that
468 structures with longer periods would be more complex, so the simplifications made here in
469 terms of characterizing capacity/demand with a single parameter as well as a rather fragile
470 vulnerability functions would be less and less defensible. Nevertheless, the general idea of
471 balancing present and future costs would still be a fruitful one.

472 The possibility of using design values that do not correspond to a fixed return period has
473 already been explored, for instance, in the case of fixed-reliability of risk-targeted design
474 spectra. However, the use of fixed return period design values is so heavily embedded in our
475 minds that there are always questions and doubts when an alternative proposal is brought out.
476 For instance, if one were to recommend a design coefficient based on optimum design, or
477 based on an acceptable risk level, there would be criticism and long discussions regarding the
478 extra parameters required: the vulnerability model, the target reliability, and so on.
479 Paradoxically, no one would discuss the choice of a 500-year return period design value,
480 even when we would not know whether it is optimum or not, or to which reliability level the
481 design is associated to.

482 But perhaps, the solution to this problem is to start discussing these alternative
483 approaches and start doing calculations and analyses that can educate our intuition about
484 other, more sensible ways of choosing seismic design values.

485 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

486 Authors are grateful to Prof. Michele Calvi for his comments and suggestions. Also, we
487 very much appreciate the valuable comments received from three anonymous reviewers,
488 which allowed improving the original version of the manuscript.

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