IMPROVING THE SEISMIC SAFETY OF NEW BUILDINGS

The BSSC program directed toward improving the seismic safety of new buildings has been conducted with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It is structured to create and maintain authoritative, technically sound, up-to-date resource documents that can be used by the voluntary standards and model code organizations, the building community, the research community, and the public as the foundation for improved seismic safety design provisions.

The BSSC program began with initiatives taken by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Under an agreement with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; formerly the National Bureau of Standards), Tentative Provisions for the Development of Seismic Regulations for Buildings (referred to here as the Tentative Provisions) was prepared by the Applied Technology Council (ATC). The ATC document was described as the product of a "cooperative effort with the design professions, building code interests, and the research community" intended to "...present, in one comprehensive document, the current state of knowledge in the fields of engineering seismology and engineering practice as it pertains to seismic design and construction of buildings." The document, however, included many innovations, and the ATC explained that a careful assessment was needed.

Following the issuance of the Tentative Provisions in 1978, NIST released a technical note calling for ". . . systematic analysis of the logic and internal consistency of [the Tentative Provisions]" and developed a plan for assessing and implementing seismic design provisions for buildings. This plan called for a thorough review of the Tentative Provisions by all interested organizations; the conduct of trial designs to establish the technical validity of the new provisions and to assess their economic impact; the establishment of a mechanism to encourage consideration and adoption of the new provisions by organizations promulgating national standards and model codes; and educational, technical, and administrative assistance to facilitate implementation and enforcement.

During this same period, other significant events occurred. In October 1977, Congress passed the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 (P.L. 95-124) and, in June 1978, the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) was created. Further, FEMA was established as an independent agency to coordinate all emergency management functions at the federal level. Thus, the future disposition of the Tentative Provisions and the 1978 NIST plan shifted to FEMA. The emergence of FEMA as the agency responsible for implementation of P.L. 95-124 (as amended) and the NEHRP also required the creation of a mechanism for obtaining broad public and private consensus on both recommended improved building design and construction regulatory provisions and the means to be used in their promulgation.

Following a series of meetings between representatives of the original participants in the NSF-sponsored project on seismic design provisions, FEMA, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), the concept of the Building Seismic Safety Council was born. As the concept began to take form, progressively wider public and private participation was sought, culminating in a broadly representative organizing meeting in the spring of 1979, at which time a charter and organizational rules and procedures were thoroughly debated and agreed upon.

The BSSC provided the mechanism or forum needed to encourage consideration and adoption of the new provisions by the relevant organizations. A joint BSSC-NIST committee was formed to conduct the needed review of the Tentative Provisions, which resulted in 198 recommendations for changes. Another joint BSSC-NIST committee developed both the criteria by which the needed trial designs could be evaluated and the specific trial design program plan. Subsequently, a BSSC-NIST Trial Design Overview Committee was created to revise the trial design plan to accommodate a multiphased effort and to refine the Tentative Provisions, to the extent practicable, to reflect the recommendations generated during the earlier review.

Address: 1090 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 700 Washington, DC 20005-4905
Local Phone: (202) 289-7800
Fax: (202) 289-1092      Email: bmurphy@nibs.org