This document outlines a research proposal to develop scale-independent methods for seismic risk management through morphological and resilience planning approaches. The proposal involves: 1) Analyzing urban morphology and defining structural units at different scales; 2) Optimizing frame structures through "reordering" load-bearing elements; 3) Developing a vulnerability reduction method for grid-patterned urban systems. The research aims to exchange lessons between scales to inform resilient planning. It applies concepts from computational morphogenesis and evolutionary structural optimization. The proposal is timely given recent seismic events and advances in related fields.

1. THE GRID REVISITED:
MORPHOGENESIS OF
SEISMICALLY
RESILIENT
STRUCTURES AT TWO
DIFFERENT
GEOGRAPHIC SCALES
MARIA BOSTENARU DAN

2. A project proposal

3. Overview
 Introduction
 State of the art
 Research objectives and potential to meet these
objectives
 Scientific and wider societal issues
 Research methodology
 Originality and innovation in relationship to the
state of the art in the research field
 Management and feasability
 Timeliness and relevance of the research

4. Introduction
 Risk management is a process including steps
like identification, assessment, mitigation,
monitoring, review and communication of risks
resulting from a certain hazard on a site or an
activity. In this paper scale independent
instruments to seismic risk management along
its structural dimension will be redefined: the
morphology (organisational) and the resilience
planning (operational), by exchanging lessons
learned at different scales.

5. State of the art
 Resilience
 Bruneau et al
 RISK UE
 World Housing Encyclopedia
 Computational morphogenesis (Ohmori et al)

6. Research objectives and potential
to meet these objectives
 integration/networking with ongoing related
research up to training
 definition of units for an efficient urban structure
towards seismic risk
 a method for optimising frame structures
through element „reordering‟
 a seismic vulnerability reduction method for an
urban system, optimised for a grid pattern
 Public education

7. Research objectives and potential
to meet these objectives
 integration/networking with ongoing related
research up to training
 Conference sessions
 Involvement of students in research
 definition of units for an efficient urban structure
towards seismic risk
 Graduation in architecture with focus urban planning
 Experience in natural hazards (earthquake) research

8. Research objectives and potential
to meet these objectives
 a method for optimising frame structures
through element „reordering‟
 Research on frame structures, mainly concrete,
but also timber and steel from Germany
 Typical for interwar time
 Results cited in research on vibration periods of
frame structures
 Adequate for selective retrofit

9. Research objectives and potential
to meet these objectives
 a seismic vulnerability reduction method for an
urban system, optimised for a grid pattern
 Method of regression
 Employed so far for decision tree and criteria determination
 Public education
 Books, conference sessions, journal special issues,
oral and poster presentations
 Press room sessions

10. Planning layers
Recovery planning
Information of process participants. Legislation
Technical (physical reconstruction)
Preparedness planning
Information of the public oppinion. Implementation planning
Organisational (emergency response)
Social
Mitigation planning
Democratisation. Use of local potentials
Technical
Social
Organisational
Resilience planning
Cooperation. Synergy
- Normal period
Social
- Crisis period
Organisational
- Recovery period
Economical
Technical

11. Scientific and wider societal issues
 Seismic risk management – planning types
 recovery, preparedness, mitigation, and resilience
stages
 Lisbon 1755
 Morphology – Goethe
 Earthquake retrofit – redesign
 Interdependencies architecture – mathematics
 Ch. Alexander
 Shape generating algorithms - evolutionary structural
optimisation - grid

12. Research methodology
 Morphological investigation
 Architectural object scale
 Urban scale
 Morphology = study of the form
 – a grid street pattern for the urban
morphology,
 – frames for the morphology of the
building load-bearing structure.

13. Research methodology
 Urban scale
 Architecture – philosophy
 Deleuze - deconstruction
 Knurled and flattened
 Catastrophes – occasions of urban remodelling
 Lisbon earthquake 1755
 London fire 1666

14. Earthquake Lisbon 1755
Alfama
After earthquake:
Baixa
Hausmannian
boulevard

15. Baroque proposal for the urban plan of London
Fire London 1666

16. Research methodology
 Optimisation of the structure
 Urban scale
 Switching roles: strategic-common
 Architectural object scale
 Switching roles: load-bearing – not load-bearing
 Lessons learned from one scale to another

17. The method of regression
grid street pattern
in the
urban structure
data set hypotheses
load-
bearing
frame
structure
optimised
structural
configuration
induction
deduction
element
reordering
in the
urban grid
for
optimised
structure
urban
textures
in
resilient
planning
hypothesis statementshypotheses
morphologic
decomposition
morpho-
genesis

18. Research methodology
 Urban morphology
 Geometry of street ways
 In urban theory, the urban organism, a complex
system, has two morphologic groups of
elements:
– urban-life (content): totality of localised urban
activities;
– urban-frame (container): totality of spaces
corresponding to localisation.

19. Research methodology
 Urban morphology
 Resilience planning
 The earthquake vulnerability of the system is
evaluated through an analysis of the system
functionality.
 A system is defined analytically through its elements
and their relationships.
 The role of the elements in the system differs,
according to their urban-frame value (ex. city image),
and their urban-life role.

20. Research methodology
 Urban morphology
 Restructuring urban actions are reordering
efforts of the elements into urban textures,
defined as sub-systems of the life-frame (matter
of the form of urban frame) elements able to
respond to the functionally requested situation.
 At urban scale, textures of morphologic
elements will build the unit of analytic
decomposition.

21. Research methodology
 Urban morphology
 The Earthquake Master Plan of Istanbul
proposes a division in risk sectors, based
among others on textures
 In the Master Plan the principles of strategic planning,
a way of risk management, were applied.
 “Urban System Exposure” (RISK UE)
 Crotone project
 Minimal urban structure
 Strategic urban structure

22. Research methodology
 Evolutionary structural optimisation (Xie and
Steven)
 step-by-step removal of the inefficient parts of the
initial structure leading to a more optimised
structural configuration
 Ohmori: extended version
 organic wall/brace shapes could build retrofit
elements added to an existing frame structure to
be retrofitted

23. Originality and innovation in relationship to
the state of the art in the research field
 Resilience planning at two geographic scales
 Morphological common unit in organisational
and operational dimensions of the project
management
 The street as spatial representation of the life
way
 Lisbon 1755 grid street pattern for fast recovery
 Grid at building level: regularity of the structure
 Frame structures
 Change of the role of the elements is innovative

24. Originality and innovation in relationship to
the state of the art in the research field
 Urban morphology
 Subject of international discussion
 Dedicated journal
 Morphology of architecture less
 Different time scales of renewal in urban space
and in architecture
 RISK UE normal, crisis and recovery periods
 New: urban structure for earthquake disaster
mitigation

25. Management and feasability
Step 1: Documentation
Objective: Integration and networking with
ongoing related research
Method: Literature and field investigation.
Instrument: Literature review and building survey.
GOAL: Data on successful examples of earthquake
resilient planning, including successful examples of
the approaches which build today the planning
layers and of computational morphogenesis
techniques for this and related purposes.

26. Management and feasability
Step 2: Morphologic analysis at urban scale
Objective: Definition of units for an efficient urban
structure towards seismic risk
Method: systemic analysis of the urban morphology
Instrument: strategic planning instruments for
networks (organisational, operational)
GOAL: Definition of urban textures on an urban
structure based on a grid pattern according to the
strategic role of elements in earthquake resilience
planning efforts.

27. Management and feasability
Step 3: Morphologic analysis and morphogenesis at
building scale
Objective: A method for optimising frame structures
through element ‘reordering’
Method: extended evolutionary structural optimisation
Instruments: modal analysis instruments, non-linear
numeric computation
GOAL: Development of an adapted evolutionary
structural optimisation method, which considers
elements instead of parts, and instead of the step-by-
step removal of parts the role change of the elements
(load-bearing to non-structural) for more seismic
efficiency.

28. Management and feasability
Step 4: Morphogenesis at urban scale
Objective: Reduction method of the earthquake
vulnerability of an urban system employing a grid
pattern based optimisation
Method: regression urban-building-urban scale for the
morphogenesis on grid pattern
Instrument: zonation with view to resilience planning
GOAL: Development of an evolutionary structure
optimisation method with application to urban planning,
by switching the roles of the elements in the structure:
in case of the urban organism from strategic to common
according to potential vulnerability (due to eventual
results of foreseen retrofit), for resilient planning for
urban structures which can be analytical decomposed to
a grid basis.

29. Management and feasability
Step 5: Spreading knowledge
Objective: public education
Method: publication of results, parallel information
flux to that of project management
Instrument: presentation at conferences, peer-
reviewed publications, web dissemination, various
instruments of the participative planning
GOAL: publications for each step from 2 to 4.

30. Timeliness and relevance of the
research
 250 years since the Lisbon earthquake
 Different geographic scales at the anniversary
conference
 2004 Sumatra earthquake did not produce such
a change
 Pre-disaster instead of post-disaster
 2003 Earthquake Master Plan of Istanbul
 Successful implementation of a concept from the
1980s
 Circulation network

31. The financial support of the European
Commission, in form of a Marie Curie
Reintegration Grants, for the project PIANO
“The innovation in the plan of the current floor:
Zoning in blocks of flats for the middle class in
the first half of the 20th century”, grant
agreement MERG-CT-2007-200636, at the host
institution Foundation ERGOROM ‟99, which
made possible this presentation, are gratefully
acknowledged.

32. THANK YOU!