GUIDELINES FOR THE SEISMIC EVALUATION OF EXISTING BUILDINGS

Because of the difficulties in applying current earthquake requirement s in the National Budding Code of Canada to existing buildings, a docu ment ''Guidelines for the seismic evaluation of existing buildings'' h as been developed to provide alternative criteria. The Guidelines are based primarily on similar U.S. documents with changes to suit Canadia n seismicity and practice. The basis of the document is earthquake dam age experience as it relates to life safety, and the methodology is ba sed on the identification of deficiencies of the building from a maste r list known from earthquake experience to result in life-threatening failures. Potential deficiencies are checked against evaluation criter ia which are based on the NBC/CSA seismic limit states design using a load reduction factor of 0.6. The paper provides a background on those features which differ substantially from the NBC requirements.