Moustafa Moufid Kassem

Universiti Sains Malaysia | USM · School of Civil Engineering

A lack of seismic consideration in the practice calculation design of BS 5400 was already known by engineers and specialists , but it is ignored since the authorities thought Malaysia was outside the seismic activity zone. Most bridge engineers in Malaysia have acquired their tertiary education from European nations like the United Kingdom (UK), Ne...

Forest fires caused by different environmental and human factors are responsible for the extensive destruction of natural and economic resources. Modern machine learning techniques have become popular in developing very accurate and precise susceptibility maps of various natural disasters to help reduce the occurrence of such calamities. )e present...

Water tanks are considered one of the most important facilities in firefighting systems and municipal water supply. These critical water storage and distribution facilities should remain operable even after a severe seismic event or sustain only damages that can be readily repaired. In recent years, the seismic design of storage tanks has been aime...

Most international design standards prohibit or necessitate alternative seismic analysis and design for building frames having vertical irregularities. Nevertheless, the irregularity quantifiers provided by design guidelines and research studies do not appear to be strongly correlated with seismic impact risk. It is universally believed that regula...

The road network is recognized as an important infrastructure system that is playing an essential role in making cities more sustainable and resilient. Hence, it is crucial to increase the safety and resiliency of urban road networks against external shocks such as earthquakes, by ensuring that they function efficiently within the complex-built env...

Our modern society is becoming increasingly reliant on transportation networks, as well as the interdependent infrastructures and technologies that interact with them. The increasing complexity and interconnectedness of infrastructure networks make them susceptible to impact not only directly from external shocks but also indirectly from the failur...

Road networks are regarded as the backbone of transportation systems, which play an important role in the social and economic prosperity of societies. Due to this reason, it is crucial to develop road networks with higher resiliency rates to operate normally during earthquake incidents. In the last decades, the research that tackled the management...

Seismic resilience index (SRI) approach describes the post-seismic recovery phase of a single building by incorporating the time dimension. In recent decades, numerous quantitative frameworks have been developed to quantify earthquake resilience. The seismic resilience of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures in Malaysia under far-field (FF)...

The main aim of this article is to shed light on the establishment of more resilient road networks, which can operate and interact regularly with the surrounding complex-built environment systems during various natural hazards such as earthquakes. This study is integrating engineering judgment and numerical methods to create a comprehensive evaluat...

Roadway systems and their assets are the backbone of the transport sector and are vital for social and economic prosperity. Hence, it is important to design and develop transportation networks that can withstand natural hazards such as earthquakes. In recent decades, research concerning disaster risk management for roadway systems has received a lo...

Sky-bridges between adjacent buildings can enhance lateral stiffness and limit the impact of lateral forces. This study analysed the structural capabilities and dynamic performances of sky-bridge-coupled buildings under various sets of ground motions. Finite Element (FE) analyses were carried out with the link being iteratively repositioned along t...

A lack of seismic consideration in the practice calculation design of BS 5400 was already known by engineers and specialists, but it is ignored since the authorities thought Malaysia was outside the seismic activity zone. Most bridge engineers in Malaysia have acquired their tertiary education from European nations like the United Kingdom (UK), New...

Seismic resilience is a concept to evaluate the postearthquake functionality of structures that significantly play a critical role in postearthquake rescue and recovery. Indeed, the community is made up of more than just buildings; it is also made up of other subsystems such as hospital and school facilities as well as roads, drainage systems, sewe...

This paper presents a uniform framework for seismic vulnerability assessment of selected reinforced concrete (RC) structures in Malaysia based on an improved seismic vulnerability index (SVI) approach. To establish the formulated framework, three stages of validation are applied to two reference buildings damaged during the 2015 Ranau seismic event...

Transmission towers are a vital lifeline for modern living and are crucial structures that must remain operational even after a seismic event. However, the towers are largely designed to withstand the effects of wind alone and not earthquakes, and the seismic influences on tower design and construction have hitherto been ignored. The purpose of thi...

This paper is written to review the previous studies of developing Damage Indices (DI) for Unreinforced Masonry (URM) Buildings. DI was designed to provide a critical indicator of damage states (DS), seismic vulnerability, and structural occupancy of buildings. DI approaches with simplified assessment methods to predict the seismic vulnerability of...

Rapid visual screening is a quick and simple approach often used by researchers to estimate the seismic vulnerability of buildings in an area. In this study, preliminary seismic vulnerability assessment of 500 buildings situated at Northern and Eastern George Town, Malaysia, was carried out by utilizing a modified FEMA-154 (2002) method that suits...

The levels of earthquake hazard, building vulnerability, and exposure are correlated with the seismic risk assessment of built-up areas. Vulnerability assessment is well known as a very important subject for the safety of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings and the mitigation of impact on built-up from natural phenomena like earthquake. In 2015, Mal...

The implementation of seismic risk management is becoming increasingly important all over the world, and especially in East-Asia as the structures aging surpass. In this context, three existing reinforced concrete buildings located in Malaysia have been selected for seismic vulnerability assessment. This work aims to apply the Seismic Vulnerability...

The damage suffered by elevated water tanks in previous seismic events can be generally attributed to poor performance of their frame-type supporting structure. It is pivotal to quantify the damage experienced by these tanks in damage states in order to ascertain their performance. In this study, the nonlinear response of frame-supported elevated w...

Seismic resilience is a modern approach that aims to return the community of damage to its natural condition in a shortest possible time. Seismic resilience could be interpreted as a struc-ture's ability to maintain a degree of functionality over a particular period of time once it is exposed to seismic events. The research study aims to address wi...

An improved seismic vulnerability index methodology is formulated on the basis of eight modeled parameters that are designed according to earthquake-resistant design concept and derived from the empirical vulnerability index that was initiated by the Group of National Defense against earthquake, named as GNDT Level approach. The results indicated t...

In the past decades, the research and development of methodologies have received considerable attention which quantified earthquake-related damages to structures. Among these, indices of seismic risk and vulnerability assessment have indeed been developed to quantify the level of damages to structural elements or the whole structural system. In thi...

Issues regarding reinforced concrete (RC) high-rise buildings involve different seismic scenarios, such as near-and far-field earthquakes, which can result in different levels and complex seismic scenario structures related to global damage. This study aims to evaluate the seismic scenario structures of a 23-storey RC high-rise building based on di...

The use of passive energy dissipation devices has been widely used in the construction industry to minimize the probability of damage occurred under intense ground motion. In this study, collapse margin ratio (CMR) and fragility curves are the main parameters in the assessment to characterize the collapse safety of the structures. The assessment is...

This paper examines the seismic performance of a Hospital Building damaged during the Ranau earthquake in Malaysia of intensity level (VIII), through an improved empirical seismic vulnerability index (SVI). The research aims at reducing the limitations and the uncertainties associated with the GNDT and the EMS approaches related to RC buildings, wh...

This study presented the development of fragility curves in three-span reinforced concrete bridges. A prototype model was designed based on British Standard (BS 5400) (Part 4). The model included three-span structures with different concrete grades and pier heights. Eurocode 8 (EC8) was used as reference for seismic consideration similar to BS 5400...

The scope of this study is to investigate the feasibility and performance of several retrofitting techniques on an existing building in Beirut Arab University (BAU). The implemented retrofitting techniques were adding RC shear walls (SW) and steel bracing systems. Simulation and analysis procedures were performed in a nonlinear platform. Models are...

This research study was carried out to analyse the seismic behaviour of ten types of six-storey moment-resisting concrete frames, which were one regular frame and nine setback frames with different building configurations. In this analysis, the setback buildings were mainly studied because they have become increasingly popular in modern multi-store...

This paper presents a simplified method in the seismic vulnerability assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings based on proposed seismic vulnerability index (SVI) methodology. The employed procedure is derived with some modifications from the Italian GNDT and the European Macro-seismic approaches. Eight parameters were modeled in three disti...

This chapter describes the experimental and FEM in order to investigate the behaviour of erected precast (SBG) subjected to static load such as deflections, stresses and strains. The procedures and processes in conducting the FEM were acquired from experimental data on a selected span of the bridge. The methodology in this chapter is divided into 4...

In this chapter, the elastic behaviour and performance of precast segmental box girder (SBG) subjected to static load test is discussed based on the experimental results and finite element method (FEM). By using finite element analysis (FEA), stress and strain could be plotted in (a) graphs to produce stress-strain relationship. Based on the deflec...

This chapter presents a brief description on precast segmental box girders technology of the longest South-East Asia Bridge in Penang, Malaysia followed by the construction process in terms of SBG Casting, SBG Transporting, and SBG Erecting. It highlights the importance of performing experimental static load test in construction of segmental bridge...

This chapter gives updates on the current work for segmental box girder (SBG) under static load test and the measurement to determine the elastic behavior, displacement, stress and strain of the SBG. Moreover, study on finite element analysis (FEA) and transversal slope on SBG is also highlighted in this chapter. At the end of this chapter, a summa...

This book explores the fundamentals of the elastic behaviour of erected precast segmental box girders (SBG) when subjected to static load, as well as the construction process (casting and erection work) involved. It analyzes and compares the experimental results with those obtained using the finite element method and theoretical calculations. A sho...

Abnormal loads that include explosions, vehicle accidents, bombings, and earthquakes that cause column failure may lead to progressive collapse. This study investigated the potential of progressive collapse of column removal in order to evaluate the tendency of progressive collapse between Moment Resisting Concrete Frames (MRCF) and Moment-Resistin...

Abnormal loads that include explosions, vehicle accidents, bombings, and earthquakes that cause column failure may lead to progressive collapse. This study investigated the potential of progressive collapse of column removal in order to evaluate the tendency of progressive collapse between Moment Resisting Concrete Frames (MRCF) and Moment-Resistin...

This research investigates the effects of structural pounding (collision of structures) caused by insufficient gaps between adjacent buildings when subjected to repeated earthquakes. The structural performance of adjacent buildings experiencing structural pounding under the effect of moderate repeated ground motions is analyzed using incremental dy...

Soft storey building is popular due to the functional and aesthetic purpose, despite its weakness in resisting seismic excitation. Nonlinear Static (Pushover) Analysis (POA) is a time saving and simple assessment procedure prosposed in Eurocode 8 (EC8). However, its reliability in designing structure still remains a question. At the first stage, se...

This paper provides data and information on Beirut Arab University's existing old building in Lebanon. The building was primarily designed to resist gravity loads only, with no attention to seismic or lateral load effects. The data shows that there is a need to improve the conditions of the existing old building by applying new features that functi...