AI and CAD for earthquake

damage evaluation
T. T. Shwe and H. Adeli
Department of Civil Engineering, The Ohio State University, 470 Hitchcock Hall,
2070 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
(Received February 1992; revised version accepted December 1992)

Lessons learned from destructive earthquakes are recorded in numerous

documents, many of which are not readily available to practicing
engineers and designers. In order to maximize the utility of the valuable
knowledge which has been learned from destructive earthquakes, a
new approach is proposed for presenting the performance evaluation
and behaviour of buildings stressed or damaged during earthquakes
using the expert system paradigm and computer graphics. A prototype
knowledge-based expert system, called EXQUAKE2, has been developed for earthquake damage evaluation and knowledge of performance
of a common class of buildings in California earthquakes. The knowledge base of EXQUAKE2 contains lessons learned from earthquakes.
EXQUAKE2 has been developed on an IBM personal computer using
the expert system shell EXSYS Professional. EXQUAKE2 has a graphics
interface, developed in Turbo Pascal, for displaying various building
configurations and structural details.
Keywords: earthquakes, expert systems, damage evaluation
The occurrence of a strong earthquake in the vicinity of a
major city provides an excellent opportunity to study the
true behaviour of structures during violent ground motions. Since analysis and design of structures is performed
on the basis of idealized mathematical models of ground
motion input, material behaviour, and structural configuration, the results of such studies are of paramount
interest and value to engineers and designers 1.
The lessons learned from t h e earthquakes are well
documented2-7. In order to maximize the utility of the
knowledge learned from destructive earthquakes, we are
currently investigating a novel approach for presenting
the performance evaluation and behaviour of buildings
stressed or damaged during earthquakes using the expert
system paradigm 8 and interactive computer graphics.
Research in artificial intelligence has advanced to the
point that many practically useful systems have been
developed 8-1. The senior author and his associates have
developed several expert systems for structural design
problems during the past few years ~1 16. These are all
coupled expert systems where traditional numerical processing is integrated with AI-based symbolic processing.
In this paper, we describe a prototype knowledgebased system, called EXQUAKE2, which describes the
performance of tilt-up buildings in California during
earthquakes including the 1971 San Fernando and the
1987 Whittier earthquakes.

Expert system development environment

EXQUAKE2 has been implemented on an IBM PC AT
using the EXSYS Professional expert system shell 17.
0141-0296/93/05032 5-05

EXSYS Professional is a microcomputer-based expert

system development package implemented in C. It can
also be used on IBM PC XT and compatible machines
and DEC VAX computers running under VMS or UNIX
operating systems. The graphics interface of EXQUAKE2 has been developed in Turbo Pascal externally.
An external program can be called from the EXSYS
Professional in several ways
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

It may be called at the beginning of the execution

It may be associated with a qualifier or a variable
It may be called through the use of the RUN
command within the rules
It may be called using the RUN command in the
report generator
It may be called from the command language.

EXSYS Professional provides a rule editor for creating

and editing rules and a rule compiler for compiling the
rules for fast processing of knowledge bases. Through the
use of the command language the knowledge base developer can control the execution of the expert system for
complex applications.
Through the use of its 'black boarding' feature, the
knowledge engineer can divide the problem domain into
small knowledge bases that can communicate with each
other through a common data file.
EXSYS Professional has a built-in report generator
which enables the knowledge engineer to control the data
outputted to a disk file or printer. This report generator
also allows the data to be passed to other programs and
it formats the conclusion of a consultation with the
expert system.

1993 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

Eng. Struct. 1993, Volume 15, Number 5 315

AI and CAD for earthquake damage evaluation: T. 7". Shwe and H. Adefi

Knowledge representation
Knowledge representation in EXSYS Professional is
through rules. Rules can be either production rules
processed by the inference mechanism or procedural
rules. A production rule consists of five parts: IF, THEN,
ELSE (optional), N O T E (optional), and R E F E R E N C E
(optional). The IF part contains a condition or series of
conditions. A condition is simply a statement of fact or
mathematical expressions which can be true or false. The
condition statement consists of two parts: a qualifier and
a value. A qualifier may be a textual expression up to and
including a verb.
The T H E N part may contain a number of statements
of facts (or potential facts). The ELSE part is similar to
the T H E N part but is applied only if the IF condition is
false. N O T E may be any comment or textual information
about the rule which is displayed whenever the rule is
displayed. It has no effect on the execution of rules.
R E F E R E N C E is used to identify the source of the
knowledge contained in the rule. R E F E R E N C E is displayed only when the user requests the reference.
In EXSYS Professional, textual information can be
displayed by creating an ASCII data file. The DISPLAY
command is then used to display the contents of the file.

Knowledge base development

The knowledge used in the knowledge base of EXQ U A K E 2 is acquired mainly from a report by Hamburger et al. TM. But, the knowledge base of this prototype
system can be readily extended to include the knowledge
obtained from other sources. In fact, this is a primary
advantage of using the expert system technology. The
elements of a knowledge base in EXSYS Professional are
subject, author, confidence mode, number of rules, starting explanatory text (optional), ending explanatory text

I Tilt-up

I
i D i,,~ge in

Elements

I of tilt-up II

--..I

Revisions to

il iy#l :ran hI'

:1'

__

eerth uake

I
j

bulMlnp

Codll I
I ~.~.,I~UBCCd'

CDAl~A'lI~-71"DA~

I durlns

(optional), rules, and rule displays. Subject may be a

short paragraph (limited to 200 characters) describing
the knowledge base. This information will be displayed in
the title screen of the knowledge base.
Author is entered as a string with a maximum length of
200 characters. It includes the name of the developer of
the knowledge base. Confidence modes available are yes
or no (0 or 1 system), a range of 0 to 10, a range of - 100
to 100, increment/decrement value, and custom formulae.
The first choice (0 or 1 system) does not require confidence factors. A choice can be positively selected or
rejected in the individual rules, and ranking of selected
choice is not required. The 0-or- 1 system has been used in
EXQUAKE2.
EXSYS Professional provides three different options
for executing knowledge bases. In the first (default)
option, an attempt is made to apply all possible rules. In
the second option, the system stops after the first successful application of a rule. In the last option, all nonredundant rules are executed.
The knowledge base of EXQUAKE2 has a hierarchical structure (Figure 1). This hierarchical structure makes
addition, deletion, and modification of the knowledge
base easy. At the top level, there are seven knowledge
modules: elements of tilt-up construction, damage to tiltup buildings in the 1971 San Fernando Earthquake,
revisions to the UBC code after the 1971 San Fernando
earthquake, design and construction trends since 1971,
damage in the 1987 Whittier-Narrows earthquake, nonstructural damage, and summary of lessons learned.
Each knowledge module is in turn structured hierarchically. For example, the knowledge module 'elements of
tilt-up construction' consists of three submodules: 'general descriptions,' 'roof systems,' and 'structural behaviour during earthquake'. The second submodule
consists of lower level modules 'metal system elements'
and 'panelized plywood system' which uses the external

] __

IL

: x~7~'~i.,

: I '~='se

I IcOl~*mewaustli '1 connectionof/I

ii m o f ~ d f l o a r li i I ~
wl Hi I

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Metal
syte~

elements

~--=--*"

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CMETA~L.DAT~)
if~. . . . . ~

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.......... II

( PLYWOOD.DAT )

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Figure 1 Hierarchical structure of knowledge base of EXQUAKE2

316

'

Eng. Struct. 1 9 9 3 , V o l u m e 15, N u m b e r 5

Module us/ng an extra'hal

Turbo Pueal program

AI and CAD for earthquake damage evaluation." T. T. Shwe and H. Adefi

Turbo Pascal program ROOF.COM for displaying the
roof structure, as shown in Figure 2.
During a consultation with EXQUAKE2, various
options are presented to the user through hierarchically
organized menus, for example, Figure 3 shows the main
menu. As mentioned earlier, descriptive information is
stored in ASCII files and displayed through the use of
DISPLAY commands. When, for instance, the user
wishes to see the damage to tilt-up buildings in the 1971
San Fernando earthquake, EXQUAKE2 will display the
information presented in Figure 4 followed by the
graphic display of the typical wall anchorage details in
tilt-up buildings before 1971 (Figure 5).
After the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, the Uniform
Building Code x9 was revised to reflect the lessons learned
from that earthquake. There were four major revisions as
shown in the display of Figure 6. The user of EXQUAKE2
can obtain a description of each item in the menu of this
figure. In addition, the graphics interface will display an

Damage in 1971 San Fernando Earthquake:

Two primary types of damage were observed:
(1)

Walls pulled away from roofs and collapsed (Connection of wall panels to roofs did not provide
sufficient strength and ductility for transferring
large out-of-plane earthquake forces).
(2) The roofs were inadequately tied together and in
some cases split apart resulting in collapse.
(Ref: Hamburger, R. O., McCormack, D. L., and Hom,
S.,' Performance of tilt-up buildings during the WhittierNarrows, California, Earthquake of October 23, 1987':
Earthquake Spectra, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1988, pp, 219-254)
FOR NEXT PAGE PRESS (SPACE~
TO RETURN TO PROGRAM PRESS (ESC~
Figure 4
quake

Damage to tilt-up building in 1971 San Fernando earth-

Panelized plywood roof system

Glulam Beams

Boundary Nails
Ancho]

Bolt

il/ \1

,,,
~ywo
Sheat

Purlin

Wall
Panel

x
Interior
columns

concrete
wall panels

Figure 2 Panelized plywood roof system displayed by graphics

interface of EXQUAKE2

The selection is
1 Elements of tilt-up construction
2 Damage in 1971 San Fernando EQ
3 Revisions to UBC code after 1971 San Fernando
EQ
4 Design and construction trends since 1971
5 Damage in 1987 Whittier-Narrow EQ
6 Nonstructural damage
7 Summary of lessons learned
Enter the number(s) of the value(s) WHY to display rule
being used QUIT to save data ( H ) for help
Figure 3

Main menu

Figure 5 Typical wall anchorage details in tilt-up buildings before

1971 San Fernando earthquake (displayed by graphics interface of
EXQUAKE2)

Revision to UBC code after 1971 San Fernando Earthquake

1
2
3
4

Positive direct connection

Continuous ties
Subdiaphragms
Increased design load

Enter the number(s) of the value(s) WHY to display rule

being used
QUIT to save data

( H ) for help

(ctrl-U~ to undo

Figure 6
Menu for revision to UBC code after 1971 San Fernando earthquake

Eng. Struct. 1993, Volume 15, Number 5

317

AI and CAD for earthquake damage evaluation. T. T. Shwe and/4. Adefi

appropriate structural detail. As an example, the graphic
display of the wall anchorage detail with positive direct
connection of concrete walls to w o o d floor diaphragms is
shown in Figure 7.
After the 1971 San F e r n a n d o earthquake, design and
construction methods were modified in order to produce
more seismically resistant buildings. In some cases, these
modifications contributed to new types of structural
failure during the 1987 Whittier earthquake. EXQ U A K E 2 can present a s u m m a r y of damages to tilt-up
buildings and lessons learned from the 1987 Whittier
earthquake.

Conclusions
A p r o t o t y p e knowledge-based expert system for earthquake d a m a g e evaluation and knowledge of performance
of a c o m m o n class of buildings in California earthquakes
has been presented. We have also developed p r o t o t y p e
knowledge-based systems for evaluating and selecting
building configurations in seismic regions 2 and presenting the earthquake resistance building design requirements of the U n i f o r m Building Code 2~.
A tremendous a m o u n t of knowledge has been obtained and valuable lessons have been learnt a b o u t the
behaviour of buildings from the destructive earthquakes
during the last thirty years. This knowledge, mostly in
descriptive and linguistic form, is presently scattered in
various literature and is held by a small n u m b e r of expert
earthquake engineers, Collecting and presenting the
knowledge of structural d a m a g e and behaviour during
earthquakes in a single expert system with a user-friendly
electronic access will have a significant effect on the
dissemination of this invaluable information. Since
knowledge in the expert system is explicit it can easily be
modified or changed. The development of such a comprehensive knowledge-based system, however, is a very

Wall anchorage detail with positive direct

connection (Hamburger et al.,1988)
"Hold-Down" type
Connector

Sheathing

Ledge~

\
Glulam Beam

Figure 7

318

Acknowledgment
This paper is based u p o n work partially supported by
the National
Science F o u n d a t i o n
under G r a n t
CES-9904129. The US G o v e r n m e n t has certain rights in
this material.

References
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Embedded
Anchor

Wall
Panel

substantial undertaking that should not be underestimated. By developing a small p r o t o t y p e expert system,
we have demonstrated the feasibility of developing such a
large expert system. We have also explored other novel
approaches to electronic presentation and processing
of earthquake engineering knowledge such as relational databases 22' 23 and object-oriented p r o g r a m m i n g
paradigm 24.

Wall anchoragedetail with positive direct connection

Eng. Struct. 1993, Volume 15, Number 5

American Society of Civil Engineers, New York, 1988

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(2) 219 254
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AI and CAD for earthquake damage evaluation: T. T. Shwe and H. Adefi

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Eng. Struct. 1993, Volume 15, Number 5 319