Short Biography:

Haluk Sucuoğlu is a Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. He is also teaching at the earthquake engineering graduate program of the Pavia University (Rose School) in Italy. Currently, he is serving as the director of Structural and Earthquake Engineering Laboratory at METU.

Seismic assessment procedures developed by Dr. Sucuoğlu have been implemented to 150,000 buildings in Istanbul during 2002-2008 within the scope of Istanbul Earthquake Master plan. He was the technical coordinator of the school retrofitting program of the Ministry of Education during 2005-2007. He is serving as the Coordination Committee Member of the Turkish Seismic Code since 2004.

Dr. Sucuoğlu is the national delegate of Turkey at IAEE, and president of the Earthquake Engineering Association of Turkey. He is the editorial board member of Earthquake Spectra, Journal of Earthquake Engineering and Earthquakes and Structures Journals. He is the recipient of the 2012 Science Award of Parlar Science and Education Foundation. He is the author of several papers published in international peer reviewed journals, and also the textbook “Basic Earthquake Engineering” recently published by Springer.

Abstract: Existing buildings in earthquake prone regions of the world pose a serious threat to societies since most of them were constructed without considering earthquake effects. Hence they are seismically deficient. In Istanbul Turkey, it is expected that 50,000 buildings will collapse in an expected major earthquake along the North Anatolian Fault crossing the Marmara Sea. Similarly, the Dead Sea Fault is silent since more than a century. It is known that this fault has created several large earthquakes in the second Millennium, and the time for a new one is perhaps due. 

This paper discusses procedures for evaluating the seismic vulnerability and assessing the expected seismic performances of large building stocks under an expected earthquake. Several procedures in the Turkish Seismic Code for improving the seismic safety of existing buildings are presented in connection with the seismic performance expected from these buildings. Performance-based procedures for assessing the seismic performance of retrofitted buildings are introduced.