Collapse Risk of Non-Ductile Concrete Shear Wall Buildings

This project assesses the collapse risk of older tall buildings in Vancouver that use non-ductile reinforced concrete shear walls (RCSW). These buildings—constructed prior to ductile detailing requirements in the mid-1980s—house thousands of residents, many of whom are low-income or elderly.

The study proposes a data-driven archetype generation framework using a random forest regression model trained on a detailed inventory of 350 buildings. It creates 25 archetypes across five height categories (10–30 stories) and models each using nonlinear response history analysis under hazard-consistent ground motions.

📰 Related Publication

📖 Journal Article

• Collapse Risk of Non-Ductile Tall Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall Buildings (ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, 2026)

🎤 Conference Presentation

• Quantifying Variability in the Collapse Risk of Non-ductile Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall Buildings (Canadian-Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Vancouver, Canada - 2023)
• Collapse Risk of Tall Non-ductile Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall Buildings (18th World Confrence on Earthquake Engineering, Milan, Italy - 2024)

👥 Collaborators

• Carlos Molina Hutt
• Kenneth J. Elwood