About

Eduardo Miranda is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He specializes in structural engineering with an emphasis on performance-based earthquake engineering. His research involves studying how structures respond to earthquakes through measurements made on the ground and on instrumented structures. He conducts research to assess the impacts of earthquakes on structures and society, and uses this knowledge to develop methods for designing and constructing structures with improved performance. Additionally, he is interested in developing computer tools to automate analysis, design, and construction processes. Dr. Miranda holds a PhD and MSc in Structural Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, obtained in 1991 and 1988 respectively, and a Civil Engineering degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) earned in 1986.

Research topics

• Engineering
• Geology
• Seismology
• Physics
• Materials science
• Structural engineering
• Forensic engineering
• History

Selected publications

• Impact of the Hypocenter Location of a M_w7.0 Scenario Earthquake on the Hayward Fault on the Seismic Response of Tall Buildings in San Francisco

  Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics · 2025-03-21 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT A regional seismic risk assessment of the tallest 150 buildings in the Financial District of the city of San Francisco, California is conducted when subjected to three hypothetical M w 7.0 earthquakes on the Hayward Fault with different hypocenters, but rupturing the same area, situated to the north, east, and south of the Financial District. The analyses are conducted using a probabilistic Monte Carlo‐based framework previously proposed by the authors, which uses reduced‐order models with linear‐elastic analyses to perform simplified site‐response analyses at each site and compute responses of each building in both principal orientations. The combined effect of the hypocenter location and building orientation on the hazard and building responses is carefully analyzed. Results indicate that peak building inter‐story drift ratios may change by as much as 20% with a change in the hypocenter location along the Hayward Fault, suggesting that regional seismic risk assessments for a scenario earthquake should consider multiple hypocenter locations for a given rupture area. Furthermore, peak building inter‐story drift ratios can change by as much as 34% with a change in both the hypocenter location along the Hayward Fault and the building principal orientation. Building inter‐story drift ratios at different building heights (i.e., not just where inter‐story drift ratios are maximum) can also change by much more than 34% with a change in the hypocenter location. This study also compares the hazard and building responses computed with the proposed framework to those computed with a commonly used Ground Motion Model (GMM). Results show that current GMMs overestimate response spectral ordinates for longer periods of vibration at shallow, soft‐soil sites, consequently leading to overestimations in displacement‐based responses of tall buildings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• INFLUÊNCIA DAS SUPERFÍCIES DE IMPLANTES DENTÁRIOS LISOS VERSUS RUGOSOS NOS PROCESSOS DE OSSEOINTEGRAÇÃO: UMA ABORDAGEM BASEADA EM EVIDÊNCIAS CIENTÍFICAS

  Editora Pascal LTDA eBooks · 2025-01-01

  book-chapter

  A osseointegração é um processo crucial para o sucesso de implantes dentários, que depende de diversos fatores, incluindo a superfície do implante. Este estudo tem como objetivo investigar a influência das superfícies de implantes dentários lisos e rugosos nos processos de osseointegração. A revisão da literatura aborda os mecanismos biológicos envolvidos na interação entre o implante e o osso, comparando as características de superfícies lisas e rugosas e os efeitos de cada uma sobre a osteogênese e a estabilidade do implante. As evidências científicas sugerem que as superfícies rugosas promovem uma melhor adesão celular, aumento da densidade óssea ao redor do implante e, consequentemente, melhor desempenho clínico em longo prazo. No entanto, aspectos como o tempo de imersão, a técnica cirúrgica e a qualidade do osso receptor também influenciam os resultados finais. A pesquisa contribui para a compreensão das características ideais de superfícies de implantes dentários e oferece diretrizes para práticas clínicas mais eficazes. Palavras-chave: Osseointegração; implantes dentários; superfícies rugosas; superfícies lisas; osteogênese.

  PublisherDOI

• Accounting for ground motion directionality and building orientations in urban seismic risk analysis

  Earthquake Spectra · 2025-02-19 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  Regional seismic risk analysis methods are used to estimate the loss of a group of buildings subjected to earthquakes. Buildings usually have two perpendicular horizontal principal orientations, which tend to be similar among buildings within the same city due to the grid‐like nature of street layouts. Current regional seismic risk analysis methods do not consider these building orientations to estimate losses because they usually consider orientation‐independent measures of horizontal ground motion intensity. However, horizontal ground motions present directionality, meaning that their intensities vary with horizontal orientation. Thus, the response of a building depends on its orientation relative to the orientation of the ground motion. This work studies the effect of building orientations and ground motion directionality on groups of buildings within a city. A testbed group of buildings subjected to an example earthquake is used to estimate losses in terms of the aggregate repair cost of the buildings. The variance of these output losses is shown to be maximized when all buildings share the same principal orientations and minimized when these orientations are fully randomized. A variance‐based sensitivity analysis is then performed to compare the contribution to the output variance of ground motion directionality with that of some other sources of uncertainty usually considered in regional seismic risk analyses. When buildings share the same principal orientations and the median ground motion intensities from all orientations are fixed, ground motion directionality is found to be an important source of uncertainty, and its importance increases as more buildings are considered in the analysis. These results suggest that considering ground motion directionality and building orientations could be important for future urban seismic risk analyses and that, under the same seismic hazard, the seismic risk of cities with regular orthogonal street arrangements is larger than that of cities with more irregular street layouts.

  PublisherDOI

• Evaluation of the Effects of Ground Motion Duration on Structural Collapse

  Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics · 2025-05-27 · 2 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT This study investigates the effect of strong motion duration on the earthquake‐induced structural collapse in seven moment‐resisting frame buildings when subjected to a set of 269 recorded ground motions. Intensities necessary to produce collapse by each record as a function of their corresponding significant duration show a clear descending trend of collapse capacity with increasing duration for all buildings with a fairly strong negative correlation ranging from −0.32 to −0.61. However, it is shown that the observed descending trend, which prior studies have attributed to being the result of strong motion duration, is primarily produced by characteristics of the ground motions other than duration. Results indicate that once these other characteristics of the ground motion are accounted for, the improvements in the estimates of collapse obtained by adding the explicit consideration of strong motion duration are not significant, particularly when using the next generation of intensity measures that are much better correlated with structural collapse. It is concluded that while there are some effects of strong motion duration, they are very small and in most cases negligible, such that practically the same probabilities of collapse are obtained by using scalar intensity measures that are well correlated with collapse without the explicit consideration of the strong motion duration.

  PublisherDOI

• Shake table tests on nonlinear steel fuses for the acceleration-control of nonstructural components

  Earthquake Spectra · 2025-06-25

  articleOpen access

  During recent major earthquakes, modern seismically designed buildings have demonstrated a low risk of collapse and life-safety limit states. However, both direct and indirect economic losses are often primarily due to damage to nonstructural components. This damage can be significant even under the more frequent low- or moderate-intensity earthquakes, as corroborated by system-level numerical studies, since it can result in greatly amplified forces and accelerations transmitted into the nonstructural components. Recent numerical research has demonstrated that this can be affordably and practically done by connecting the component to the structure via sacrificial controlled-strength steel fuses, designed to yield at desirable force levels and hence limiting the forces and damage in the nonstructural component. A shake table testing campaign was undertaken at the University of Bristol to experimentally validate this concept. The tests involved 14 specimens comprising different masses and tuned fuse geometries subjected to recorded floor motions, resulting in a total of 45 dynamic tests. The testing campaign, the instrumentation, the processing, and deduction of the response histories are described in detail. The resulting dataset is curated, organized, and made publicly available through an online repository to support further numerical and computational research on damage-free structures.

  PublisherDOI

• Relationship between maxillary atresia and mandibular deviation in young adults: A retrospective CBCT study

  International Orthodontics · 2025-10-31

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Regional damage estimation of tall pre‐Northridge steel moment‐resisting frame buildings in San Francisco during the Loma Prieta earthquake

  Earthquake Spectra · 2025-04-29 · 2 citations

  article

  For many years, steel moment‐resisting frames (SMRF) with welded beam‐column connections were thought to be the best lateral‐force‐resisting system for buildings in high‐seismic regions. However, the 1994 Northridge earthquake revealed the important vulnerabilities of what are now referred to as pre‐Northridge connections, which experienced unanticipated brittle fractures in many buildings in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region. There are several tall SMRF buildings with pre‐Northridge connections worldwide, raising serious safety concerns about their performance during future earthquakes. To investigate possible undiscovered damage in these types of connections, an advanced probabilistic regional seismic risk and damage assessment is conducted on 97 tall SMRF buildings in the Financial District of San Francisco, California, with pre‐Northridge beam‐column connections that were subjected to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. This study aims to identify the buildings, floor levels, and orientations more likely to have experienced brittle fractures during the Loma Prieta earthquake. Results indicate that despite this earthquake being only moderate in magnitude with an epicenter approximately 95 km away from the Financial District, peak inter‐story drift ratios in the tall buildings reach 0.65%. Median peak probabilities of yielding and fracture of beam‐column connections do not exceed 37% and 12%, respectively. As a result of ground motion directionality and differences in grid plan in the city, buildings located south of Market Street experienced considerably greater building responses and probabilities of damage than buildings located north of Market Street. Estimates of damage from this study suggest that some pre‐Northridge beam‐column connections likely fractured during the Loma Prieta earthquake, but the fractures were not as widespread as in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. However, earthquakes with either higher magnitudes or closer source‐to‐site distances to the city of San Francisco may cause significant damage to SMRF buildings constructed before the Northridge earthquake.

  PublisherDOI

• AMPLIFICATION FACTORS TO ESTIMATE INELASTIC DISPLACEMENT DEMANDS FOR THE DESIGN OF STRUCTURES IN THE NEAR FIELD

  World Conference of Earthquake Engineering · 2025-12-18 · 75 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The effects of rupture directivity at near-fault sites on the ratio of maximum inelastic displacement demand to maximum elastic displacement demand are investigated. Inelastic displacement ratios are computed for single-degree-of-freedom systems undergoing different levels of inelastic deformation when subjected to 82 earthquake ground motions recorded at distances closer than 15 km from the surface projection of the rupture. It is found that in addition to increments of linear elastic spectral ordinates in the long period spectral region previously identified by seismologists, forward directivity effects can affect the ratio of maximum inelastic displacement demand to maximum elastic displacement demand. Results indicate that inelastic displacement ratios computed from near-fault records are typically larger than those computed from distant records for periods between 0.1 and about 1.3s. Similarly, inelastic displacement ratios corresponding to faultnormal components are, in general, larger than those of fault-parallel components in the same spectral region. From various ground motions parameters investigated that may affect inelastic displacement ratios of structures located in the near field it is found that peak ground velocity and maximum incremental velocity are the most important ones. Results show that structures subjected to ground motions with large velocity pulses may experience maximum inelastic deformations larger than those subjected to ground motions that do not have these pulses, even if linear elastic ordinates in the short period spectral region are similar. Thus, it is concluded that modification of linear elastic design spectra alone may not be enough to adequately control maximum inelastic deformations in structures located near active faults.

  PublisherDOI

• Effect of damping on response spectral ordinates of ground motions recorded on soft soils in the San Francisco Bay Area

  Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering · 2025-04-22 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Impact of urban layout and ground motion directionality on building responses and damages in San Francisco during the Loma Prieta earthquake

  Earthquake Spectra · 2025-10-25

  article

  Current regional seismic risk assessment methods do not take into account either ground motion directionality or building orientation. A recent study examined the combined effect of ground motion directionality and building orientation for a testbed of imaginary buildings with the same height, structural material, lateral resisting system, and underlain soil properties. That study concluded that future urban seismic risk analyses should consider the combined effects of ground motion directionality and building orientation, and indicated that further research was warranted to conduct this type of assessment in real-world conditions. This investigation specifically examines the combined effects of ground motion directionality and urban layout on the seismic responses and damages of 150 tall buildings in San Francisco’s Financial District during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, using an advanced probabilistic regional seismic risk framework previously developed by the authors. Building responses and damages were computed for three scenarios: (1) buildings in their current orientations, (2) buildings rotated so that one principal axis is aligned with the RotD100 orientation during the Loma Prieta earthquake in downtown San Francisco, and (3) buildings rotated so that both building principal axes are 45° from the RotD100 orientation. The results indicate that peak building responses and damages can vary by up to 30% and 100%, respectively, depending on changes in the urban grid layout. However, responses and damages at individual building stories can change by much more than 30% and 100%, respectively. Larger responses and damages are expected to occur when the city has an orthogonal grid layout and the orientation of RotD100 aligns with the city’s street grid. These findings, which highlight the combined impact of urban layout and ground motion directionality on building responses and damages, have important implications for city officials, planners, insurers, reinsurers, and other stakeholders involved in regional seismic risk assessments.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NEESR-CR: Collapse Simulation of Multi-Story Buildings through Hybrid Testing

  NSF · $1.2M · 2009–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Héctor Dávalos

  Universidad Panamericana

  39 shared

• Pablo Heresi

  University of Chile

  39 shared

• Sebastián Miranda

  Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

  20 shared

• Alan Poulos

  Earthquake Engineering Research Institute

  18 shared

• James Bantis

  Earthquake Engineering Research Institute

  14 shared

• Gregory G. Deierlein

  Stanford University

  14 shared

• Jorge Ruiz‐García

  Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo

  14 shared

• Juan Carlos de la Llera

  Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management

  14 shared

Labs

• Eduardo Miranda's LabPI

  Not provided

Education

• Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Stanford University

  1995

• M.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Stanford University

  1991

• B.S., Civil Engineering

  University of Sao Paulo

  1987

Awards & honors

• Bruce Bolt Medal (2026)