(BUILDING RESEARCH INSTITUTE 2011) The Great East Japan Earthquake Damage Report
(BUILDING RESEARCH INSTITUTE 2011) The Great East Japan Earthquake Damage Report
(BUILDING RESEARCH INSTITUTE 2011) The Great East Japan Earthquake Damage Report
A
rienced around the
t 2:46 p.m. on March 11, country is important information through
2011, what is formally known which we can understand the structural
as the “2011 off the Pacific damage caused by the earthquake. To
coast of Tohoku Earthquake” look at this, we will introduce strong mo-
struck, with an epicenter off the coast of tion seismograms recorded in the disas-
Sanriku. Casualties from the disaster ter-affected regions, which were obtained
stand at 15,839 fatalities and 3,642 miss- through the strong-motion earthquake area from Hokkaido to western Japan.
ing. Damage to buildings includes observation project conducted by the As the earthquake occurred along what
120,241 buildings completely destroyed, BRI. The epicentral area of this earth- is known as a plate boundary, the rup-
189,822 buildings partially destroyed quake was extremely large, and regions tured epicentral area was large, and the
and 598,587 buildings partially damaged experiencing strong motion occurred resultant aftershock area is estimated to
(announced by the National Police across the widest area ever seen. have been around 500 km to the north
Agency as of November 17, 2011). While buildings also suffered dam- and south, and around 200 km to the
While the size of the earthquake age, buildings constructed according to east and west. The seismic rupture
was reported as magnitude 7.9 by the the new earthquake resistance standards began around the area indicated by the
Japan Meteorological Agency immedi- did not suffer major damage. In light of symbol in Figure 1, and according to
ately after it struck, on March 13 this lessons learned from earthquake damage BRI analysis, the largest slip amount of
was revised to 9.0 (on the moment mag- due to the 1978 Miyagi earthquake and about 48 meters occurred in the vicinity
nitude scale). An earthquake of this size others, Japan strengthened its seismic of the ocean trench where the plate
was Japan’s largest in recorded history, design standards in accordance with the boundary is located. It is also estimated
and the scale of damage it caused was Building Standards Law and related that between 10 and 30 meters of slip
also greater than ever experienced. ordinances from June 1981. These stan- amount occurred from off the coast of
The tsunami waves that arrived dards are known as the new earthquake Miyagi Prefecture to the southern
along the coast shortly after the earth- resistance standards. Sanriku Coast, approximately ten meters
quake hit reached far inland over a vast off the Fukushima coast and roughly
area from Aomori Prefecture in the Large Epicentral Area two meters off the coast of Ibaraki
north to Chiba Prefecture in the south, Prefecture. Off the central Sanriku coast,
resulting in immense damage. The earthquake was felt across a wide slip amount of between five and eleven
meters is estimated in some areas. were felt across almost all of Japan. the building at the time. This is easy if
The symbol in Figure 1 indicates the seismic observations are conducted in
starting point of the rupture which rep- *1 K-NET: A ground-based strong-motion buildings. The BRI conducts seismic
earthquake observation network installed
resents the beginning of the earthquake. across Japan by the National Research observations targeting buildings at ap-
From this point the rupture widened as Institute for Earth Science and Disaster proximately seventy locations nation-
Prevention and the system which transmits
far as off the coast of Iwate Prefecture to strong-motion recording data via the Internet. wide with the aim of measuring the
the north and Ibaraki Prefecture to the *2 Gal: Unit of acceleration (1 gal earthquake resistance of buildings.
south, resulting in a vast epicentral area. = 1 cm/s2)
Figure 6: Characteristics of seismic movements
Widespread Shaking The seismic intensity in disaster-affected regions (inside buildings).
readings shown in Figure 2 The stated level is exceeded at 2 and 3 seconds
into the cycle, but this is not a problematic level.
In Japan, the size of earthquake shocks is are calculated from ground-
expressed in terms of the Japan based observation records.
Damping Ratio: 5% Akita Prefectural Office B1F
Pseudo Velocity Response
Meteorological Agency (JMA) Seismic Seismic movements vary not Hachinohe City Hall GL
Iwaki City Hall B1F
Intensity Scale. The largest seismic inten- only according to the size of Miyako City Hall GL
Niigata City Hall B1F
sity recorded during the 2011 earthquake an earthquake and the dis- Sendai Government Office Building B2F
Design Level on Bedrock
was level 7 at the Tsukidate station in tance from the epicenter, but
(cm/s)
(cm/s)
Table 1: Main strong motion records obtained by BRI was large, and since there was a long time
Max. Acc. (cm/s2) from the start to end of rupturing at the
Code Station Name _ (km) IJMA Loc.
H1 H2 V epicenter, the shocks felt in all regions
SND
Sendai Government Office
175 5.2
B2F* 163 259 147 continued for longer than ever before.
Bldg. No. 2 (high-rise) 15F 361 346 543
Table 1 shows the instrumental inten-
01F* 333 330 257
THU
Tohoku University Civil Engineering and
177 5.6 sity, directional peak acceleration, etc. of
Architecture Bldg. 09F 908 728 640 the shocks recorded at major observation
01F 138 122 277 stations during the 2011 earthquake.
MYK Miyako City Hall 188 4.8 07F 246 197 359
GL* 174 174 240
Of these stations, the Civil
B1F* 175 176 147 Engineering and Architecture building
IWK Iwaki City Hall 210 5.3
09F 579 449 260 (ninth floor) at Tohoku University,
A01* 279 227 248 which recorded a large velocity response
A89 142 153 102
BFE 194 191 136
during the 1978 off the coast of Miyagi
ANX Building Research Institute 330 5.3
8FE 597 506 344 Prefecture earthquake, also obtained a
MBC 203 206 152 large recording this time. However,
M8C 682 585 311 from the comparison of their respective
B3F* 74 63 42 velocity waveforms shown in Figure 5
Saitama Shintoshin Government
SIT2 378 4.4 10FS 119 138 62
Office Building No.2 Annex (high-rise) we can see that the 2011 earthquake was
27FS 248 503 107
Saitama Shintoshin
much longer than the 1978 earthquake.
SITA Government Office Building, Public 378 4.5 01F* 90 105 47 In Figure 6, we compared the pseudo
Welfare Building
velocity response spectra that indicates
GL* 265 194 150
National Museum of Western Art B1FW 100 79 84
the cyclical size of seismic motions for
NMW 382 4.8
(base-isolation) 01FW 76 89 87 buildings in the main disaster-affected
04F 100 77 90 regions of Sendai, Iwaki, Miyako and
Central Government Office Bldg. No.6
01F* 90 86 45 Hachinohe. The observations were re-
CGC 386 4.4 20B 208 148 173
(high-rise) corded at building ground level, base-
19C 179 133 130
B4F* 75 71 49 ment level or on the ground. For be-
CG2
Central Government Office Bldg. No.2
(high-rise)
386 4.2 13F 137 113 72 tween two and three seconds of the
21F 121 131 104 cycle, the observations slightly exceeded
B2F* 104 91 58
Central Government Office Bldg. No.3 the Building Standards Law design
CG3 386 4.5 B1F 55 41 62
(base-isolation)
12F 94 82 104
spectra level for engineering bedrock,
B8F 61 88 53 but not by such a large margin. In addi-
B4F 68 101 56 tion, observations in the long-period
NDLA Annex, National Diet Library 387 4.5
01F* 76 104 84 areas were not especially large.
04F 125 192 94
Also note that at Miyako City Hall,
01F* 35 33 80
18F 41 38 61 the government building was inundated
SKS
Sakishima Office, Osaka Prefecture
(high-rise)
770 3.0 38F 85 57 18 to the second floor. Since the recording
52FN 127 88 13 device for seismological data was on the
52FS 129 85 12
top floor of the government building, we
Note: _: epicentral distance; IJMA : instrumental seismic intensity (calculated from records of acceleration of were able to retrieve the data.
three components according to JMA method using asterisked sensor); Installation azimuth: clockwise direction
from North; H1, H2, V: maximum accelerations in horizontal #1 (Azimuth), horizontal #2 (Azimuth + 90°) and Figure 7 shows the pseudo velocity
vertical directions. A01: Ground surface A89: 89m underground response spectra indicating the cycli-
cal size of seismic motions for the ob-
In Japan, strong-motion earthquake Office Bldg. No. 2 (SND), Tohoku servational data obtained in buildings
observations began in 1953. The BRI University (THU) and Iwaki City Hall in the major areas of the Tokyo metro-
has also conducted building observa- (IWK) show high levels. In particular, politan area.
tions over a long period that dates back the reinforced concrete structure of the Even in the Kanto region, K-NET
to this time. Figure 3 shows which of the Civil Engineering and Architecture build- and other networks observed extremely
current BRI observation stations record- ing at Tohoku University was damaged strong shaking at some stations in the
ed measurements during the 2011 earth- and has been rendered unusable. At the prefectures of Ibaraki, Tochigi and Chiba.
quake. As shown in Figure 4, the obser- time of the 1978 Miyagi earthquake that However, observation values in the
vation stations are more densely struck in June 1978, acceleration of more Tokyo metropolitan area itself were not
arranged in the Tokyo metropolitan area. than 1G was recorded on the ninth floor that large.
Table 1 shows the instrumental seis- of this building.
mic intensity and directional peak acceler- Long-period Seismic Motion
ation for the main strong motion stations. Long-lasting Shaking
In terms of observed values, observa- Based on the size of the 2011 earth-
tion stations such as Sendai Government As mentioned earlier the epicentral area quake, strong long-period seismic mo-
Kamaishi City
of Osaki in Miyagi Hiraizumi Town
Rikuzentakata City
Sukagawa in Kesennuma City
Onagawa Town
Nasu-gun, Tochigi Higashi Matsushima City
tion was predicted, but in fact, this was Prefecture. On the Natori City
Iwanuma City
not seen to a great extent in the Tokyo other hand, in Watari Town
Yamamoto Town
shaking, and in one case a sway of 260 not so great compared Shimotsuma City Naka City
Hitachinaka City
centimeters was recorded near the top of with the instrumental Furukawa City Mito City
Oarai Town
Bando City
a building on the fifty-second floor. seismic intensity that Joso City
Omitama City
Hokota City
Note that even in the Tokyo metropoli- was recorded. Tsuchiura City Kashima City
Itako City
tan region, more than a little elevator The types of Ryugasaki City
Sakae Town
Kamisu City
Surveyed cities and towns
and non-structural damage in high-rise damage observed Urayasu City
Inashiki City