EarthquakesQuake Summit 2013: showcasing research on earthquakes, tsunamis

Members of a national earthquake simulation research network next week will gather at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), for Quake Summit 2013, a scientific meeting highlighting research on mitigating the impact of devastating earthquakes and tsunamis.

Titled “Earthquake & Multi-Hazards Resilience: Progress and Challenges,” the annual summit of the 14-site George E. Brown Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), will run from 6 August through 8 August at UNR’s Joseph Crowley Student Center.

“Geared toward earthquake engineers, hazards researchers and students and educators in these areas, Quake Summit 2013 features nearly 100 presentations on the latest research in earthquake engineering and multi-hazards resilience, much of it cutting-edge technique for engineers and scientists,” said Julio Ramirez, NEES’ chief officer and a civil engineering professor at Purdue.

A Purdue University release reports that Quake Summit 2013 will feature plenary and concurrent technical sessions, as well as a research poster reception. Alongside research engineers, students in NEES’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program also will display their projects.

The event is expected to attract more than 300 experts and students from throughout the United States and abroad. It also will feature the new Earthquake Engineering laboratory at UNR, home of the NEES@UNR shared-use laboratory with multiple shake tables that can be used separately or in combination for research on long, spatially distributed structural and geotechnical systems.

See here for a detailed program of the speakers and their presentations.

In conjunction with the conference, the Journal of Structural Engineering of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has published special editions for July and August that focus on earthquake-related research conducted in NEES.

Special editors for the research publications are John W. van de Lindt, George T. Abell Professor in Infrastructure at Colorado State University; Jeffrey Berman, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington; and P. Benson Shing, professor of structural engineering at the University of California, San Diego.

“It was clear that there were an obvious number of projects that could be written up on the latest efforts in earthquake-related research,” said van de Lindt, “all high quality and all providing results that move the profession further toward designing resilient buildings, bridges and other structures.”

Added Berman, who is presenting at the summit: “Many of the research projects that have papers in the NEES special issues of the Journal of Structural Engineering also are being presented at the 2013 Quake Summit. This interaction between the two venues provides opportunities for the research to reach additional audiences and broaden its impact.”

Since 1 October 2009, the NEES operations and cyberinfrastructure headquarters has been located at Purdue’s Discovery Park, the result of National Science Foundation (NSF) cooperative agreement #CMMI-0927178. NEEScomm is the operations unit at Purdue.