Abstract
Controlling earthquakes based on the probabilistic seismic hazard analyses (PSHA) are directly linked with a specified hazard level, which are currently considered to be promising concept for future performance-based seismic engineering and design. For further use of this useful concept, in the first place, it is important to study the fundamental characteristics of the controlling earthquakes derived from the previously proposed methods, which have not been intensively comparatively discussed so far. Secondly, it is demonstrated in this paper that there may be several possible methods to select controlling earthquakes, one of which utilizes the structural reliability theory in a rational way.
