Seismic Structural Design

[PKJENNY]

Hi,

Following the recent earthquake happened in Myanmar, a question comes to mind about seismic design.
Thailand is not considered as a seismic region. However, the Myanmar earthquake extends to Thailand, even to Bangkok which seems to be very far away from Myanmar, causing severe damage there.
So how the international standards in general determine whether a location would be affected by earthquake? Take this Myanmar case as an example, is that e.g. within a specific distance from a seismic region, all building structure should be recommended to have seismic structure design taken into account?

p.s. I'm not a CSA discipline, so appreciate some advices from any professional here. Many thanks.

 

[KootK]

So how the international standards in general determine whether a location would be affected by earthquake?

Primarily based on the statistical analysis of the past history of earthquakes in the region with respect to magnitude and occurrence intervals. It would be awesome if we could just study the geology of an area and work out the seismic loads from that but, presently, such a mechanistic approach is well beyond our capability.

Heck, as early as 1970, engineers were not even convinced that plate tectonics was a real thing.

So, in a very real way, we just observe problems as they develop and react to that as best we can. Vancouver Island and Calgary, two radically different Canadian jurisdictions, have both had their seismicity upgraded significantly with our latest code cycle. This can be frustrating for developers but there's not much to be said of it other than "we have better information now and this is what it tells us".