Body, performance and struggle: Towards an aesthetics of moral recognition

El reconocimiento intersubjetivo (Anerkennung) constituye un principio fundamental de cierta teoría crítica contemporánea (A. Honneth, N. Fraser, Ch. Taylor, J. Butler, etc.). Fundamentalmente estudiado en términos sociales, culturales y morales, se ha descuidado la dimensión estética del mismo. En el presente artículo se aborda el potencial estético del reconocimiento en cuanto que performance “intercorporal” (Merleau-Ponty) y se analiza, en particular, el uso que este tiene en Dos amerindios no descubiertos, performance latinoamericana de Coco Fusco y Gómez Peña.The Intersubjective Recognition (Anerkennung) is a fundamental principle for some branch of contemporary critical theory (A. Honneth, N. Fraser, Ch. Taylor, J. Butler, etc.). Mostly studied in social, cultural and moral terms, the dimension of aesthetics has been neglected. The present paper attempts to address the aesthetic potential of the recognition in terms of “inter-body” (Merleau-Ponty) performance and, at the same time, it is analized, particularly, the use that recognition has in Dos amerindios no descubiertos, a latinamerican performance by Coco Fusco and Gómez Peña

A Probabilistic Method for the Prediction of Earthquake-Induced Slope Displacements

This work presents a probabilistic method for estimating earthquake-induced nonlinear slope displacements. This method is applicable to any kind of slope, embankment and earth/rockfill dam. When coupled with Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis at the slope site, it produces estimates of the annual probability that a permanent deformation of the slope will be exceeded. The proposed method uses a set of 2D numerical analyses with non-linear constitutive relationships for the soil formations to establish a probabilistic relationship between one or more ground motion parameters and the permanent displacement at a specific location within the slope. The analyses, which are performed using the computer code FLAC 5.0 (Itasca, 2005), use as input a set of different recorded accelerograms that include both horizontal and vertical components. The method is applied to the Salcito landslide (Molise, Southern Italy), which was investigated in detail by Bozzano et al. (2008). The stability of the same slope is also assessed using the conventional Newmark’s method and a decoupled approach and the results are compared and contrasted with those obtained using FLAC

Seismic hazard disaggregation in performance-based earthquake engineering: occurrence or exceedance?

Seismic hazard disaggregation is commonly used as an aid in ground-motion selection for the seismic response analysis of structures. This short communication investigates two different approaches to disaggregation related to the exceedance and occurrence of a particular intensity. The impact the different approaches might have on a subsequent structural analysis at a given intensity is explored through the calculation of conditional spectra. It is found that the exceedance approach results in conditional spectra that will be conservative when used as targets for ground-motion selection. It is however argued that the use of the occurrence disaggregation is more consistent with the objectives of seismic response analyses in the context of performance-based earthquake engineering. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Issues in Harmonization of Seismic Performance via Risk Targeted Spectra

Current seismic design code provisions are mainly based on checking structural performance at a single seismic intensity associated with a pre-defined return period. For instance, in EN1998, a ground motion with 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years is used for design. This design procedure, with the inclusion of partial safety factors, is assumed to provide sufficient safety margin against earthquakes for newly designed buildings. Nevertheless, it does not specifically determine the expected seismic risk related to any performance level or limit state. Therefore, it may result in non-uniform risk for buildings located in different sites within a region (or country), even for places with identical design intensities. Instead, ASCE 7-10 incorporates Risk Targeted design maps that suggest the application of suitable spectra adjustment factors, in order to ensure a reasonably low uniform collapse risk. Making use of simplified single degree of freedom structures defined in several configurations of period and ductility, our aim is to test the effectiveness of the adjustment factors computed under different assumptions. It is shown that, although matching is not practically possible, harmonization remains a viable target, offering insights for possible future adoption of Risk Targeted Spectra in forthcoming seismic codes.The second author acknowledges the support of the European Commission via the Horizon 2020 Grant No. 769129 PANOPTIS: Development of a Decision Support System for increasing the Resilience of Transportation Infrastructure based on combined use of terrestrial and airborne sensors and advanced modelling tools

Hazard-consistent response spectra in the Region of Murcia (Southeast Spain): comparison to earthquake-resistant provisions

Hazard-consistent ground-motion characterisations of three representative sites located in the Region of Murcia (southeast Spain) are presented. This is the area where the last three damaging events in Spain occurred and there is a significant amount of data for comparing them with seismic hazard estimates and earthquake-resistant provisions. Results of a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis are used to derive uniform hazard spectra (UHS) for the 475-year return period, on rock and soil conditions. Hazard deaggregation shows that the largest hazard contributions are due to small, local events for short-period target motions and to moderate, more distant events for long-period target motions. For each target motion and site considered, the associated specific response spectra (SRS) are obtained. It is shown that the combination of two SRS, for short- and long-period ground motions respectively, provides a good approximation to the UHS at each site. The UHS are compared to design response spectra contained in current Spanish and European seismic codes for the 475-year return period. For the three sites analysed, only the Eurocode 8 (EC8) type 2 spectrum captures the basic shape of the UHS (and not the EC8 type 1, as could be expected a priori). An alternative response spectrum, anchored at short- and long-period accelerations, is tested, providing a close match to the UHS spectra at the three sites. Results underline the important contribution of the frequent, low-to-moderate earthquakes that characterize the seismicity of this area to seismic hazard (at the 475-year return period)