Degenkolb worked with the city to help craft a seismic ordinance program that will seismically evaluate and possibly strengthen three critically vulnerable building types in a proactive time frame.

The City of Pasadena is currently in the process of developing a Wood Soft Story Seismic Retrofit Ordinance. Degenkolb is providing expertise in examining a preliminary soft-story survey as well as assisting in developing of the ordinance language. 

Performed a survey of city buildings to identify potential seismically vulnerable structures including non-ductile concrete and pre-Northridge steel moment frame buildings.

The tsunami-ready program leverages the recently-published national standard ASCE 7-16, which includes provisions for tsunami loads and effects on building structures, by developing an evaluation criteria to screen and evaluate buildings which may be viable for tsunami vertical evacuation.

The project utilized a grassroots process to develop vertical evacuation strategies for several communities in both Grays Harbor and Pacific counties.

Performance-based design methodologies were implemented to ensure that the structure would be able to resist a Cascadia earthquake while having sufficient capacity to resist subsequent tsunami inundation forces.

Assisted The City of Beverly Hills with its Seismic Program.

Building safer communities

Degenkolb pioneers development of seismic and tsunami building safety measures. We are involved throughout the country in code development to enhance resilience design measures. On the West Coast we work with researchers to implement evidence based design on first of their kind structures.

In recent years, many communities have recently elected to institute seismic ordinances designed to improve the expected performance of certain classes of buildings during a seismic event. The goal of these ordinances vary from city to city but generally include better protection for the life safety of the public and are also expected to improve the seismic resilience of their communities. We have and will continue to serve cities by assisting them with the development of their seismic programs.  In addition, we serve our clients by providing current information on these ordinances and expert advice and counsel on how best to comply with them.

The 2018 IBC contains provisions for tsunami design and building evaluations. Degenkolb is developing first of their kind tsunami evacuation structures around the Pacific Coastal region.

 

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