Accurate Application and Second-Order Improvement of SAC/FEMA Probabilistic Formats for Seismic Performance Assessment

The SEAONC/ATC/CUREE (SAC/FEMA) probabilistic framework is based on a closed-form expression to estimate analytically the value of the risk integral convolving seismic hazard and structural response. Despite its practicality, implementation has been hindered by reduced accuracy due to a number of approximations that are needed to achieve a desirable form, the most significant being the power-law fitting of the seismic hazard curve. To mitigate this problem, two approaches are given: (1) selecting an appropriately biased power-law fit, and (2) offering a novel closed-form expression involving a second-order approximation. Where blind application of the original format could involve errors in excess of 100% for the predicted mean annual frequency of limit-state (LS) exceedance, biased fitting reduces it to less than 50% for many practical cases, whereas the new closed-form expression consistently brings it below 10%. While other sources of error still remain, the robustness achieved opens new avenues of application for this popular format.