Commentary on FEMA P-807 for Retrofit of Wood-Frame Soft-Story Buildings. Issue 4 (November 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Maison, Bruce; McDonald, Brian; McCormick, David; Schotanus, Marko; Buckalew, Jonathan
• Is Part Of: Earthquake spectra. Volume 30:Issue 4(2014)
• Page Start: 1359
• Page End: 1380
• Publication Date: 2014-11
• Subjects: Earthquake engineering -- Periodicals; Earthquake engineering; Periodicals; 624.1762
• DOI: 10.1193/121213EQS293
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 8755-2930

Abstract

The FEMA P-807 guideline titled Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Multi-Unit Wood-Frame Buildings with Weak First Stories is a new approach for building retrofit. It goes beyond current building codes and standards by quantifying performance in probabilistic terms. The authors performed an independent review of P-807, and the resulting commentary herein covers five topics: (1) building lateral force-drift (backbone) curves, (2) building interstory drift limits, (3) lateral strength requirements, (4) collapse safety margins, and (5) site class effects. It was concluded that P-807 may be an efficient way for relative ranking and selection of retrofit designs—but it has questionable accuracy for predicting actual building performance (i.e., the probability that a particular seismic intensity will result in a meaningful state of damage for a specific building).