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reduction priorities, have specific requirements that influence the strategic research planning for the CRP.
Transportation officials are interested in assessing and minimizing the consequences of reduction or loss
of traffic flow on their networks. The Construction Industry is interested in the market share appropriated
by different construction form and material. Building owners are primarily interested in the probable
damage to their properties from an occupant safety and continued operation viewpoints. Finally, the
insurance industry is interested in quantifying the levels of relative risk on regional and national scales to
refine setting premiums and deductibles as well as spread their exposure over areas of different levels of
risk. The common thread amongst the stakeholder groups is that loss assessment and visualization, before
and after the application of a number of risk reduction measures, is essential for their continued operation
and effective future planning. This requirement is the motivation behind the development of the DS-1
visualization module, which in turn drives the technical developments within the CRP.
Another group with an interest in MAE Center research is engineering practitioners who will be early
adopters of the CBE paradigm. Whereas consulting firms do not generally fund research, advice of
practitioners with respect to the practicality of implementing a new engineering approach is essential for
its ultimate success. Consultants with experience in providing seismic risk assessments for stakeholder
clients are engaged with the MAE Center in refining further the research programs, as well as in
developing specific projects, such as DS-9 on risk assessment modeling.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The research projects currently underway at the MAE Center have been presented, starting from the
definition of the guiding paradigm of CBE and its operational steps (Figure 1), to the contents of the
individual projects. The relationships (input-output) between projects were presented in Figure 3, whilst
the contribution of each project to the CBE application steps is shown in Table 1. The relationship
between core and stakeholder research was briefly described and diagrammatically represented in Figure 4.
By virtue of the above presentation, it is emphasized that the framework of CBE provides an effective tool
for setting research priorities towards global seismic risk assessment and mitigation. The MAE Center
research program presented above, in a CBE context, is comprehensive and fully coordinated. The
ensuing research projects also provide a core of developments and application examples that are of use to
a wide range of industrial projects and stakeholder interests.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Development of the research plan described in this paper is funded primarily by the Earthquake
Engineering Research Centers Program of the National Science Foundation under Award Number EEC-
9701785. The authors have benefited substantially from discussions with the MAE Center Executive
Advisory Board, Stakeholder Advisory Board and others.