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Researchers to gather for Quake Summit
Quake Summit 2011 includes a field trip to UB MCEER’s ECLIPSE campus to view a full-scale bridge test of elastomeric seismic isolation bearings that support these 72-foot long concrete box girder bridges.
The 2011 earthquakes that struck New Zealand and Japan, research on improving nuclear power plant design, earthquake engineering research in the U.S. in the next quarter century and improving resilience of buildings, bridges and critical infrastructure are all on the agenda for Quake Summit 2011, Earthquake & Multi-Hazards Resilience: Progress and Challenges, to be held in Buffalo June 9-11.
Quake Summit 2011 combines the annual meeting of the UB’s MCEER (formerly the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research) and the George E. Brown Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), funded by the National Science Foundation. It will be held in the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center and the Hyatt Regency Buffalo.
Geared toward earthquake engineers, hazards researchers and students and educators in these areas, the conference will feature nearly 100 presentations on the latest research in earthquake engineering and multi-hazards resilience. It is expected to attract more than 200 experts and students from throughout the U.S. and abroad.
For a complete program, and to register, click here.
February’s Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquake and the March 11 offshore Honshu, Japan, earthquake and tsunami will be discussed during the opening plenary session at 5:30 p.m. June 9. This session is being organized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, a national, nonprofit, technical society of engineers, geoscientists, architects, planners, public officials and social scientists.
A plenary session titled “Earthquake Engineering: The Next 25 Years” will take place at 8 a.m. June 11 and will explore recommendations of two National Research Council panels.
“Next Generation Nuclear Power Plants” will be covered in a breakout session on June 11 chaired by Andrew Whittaker, professor and chair of the UB Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering. The session will feature discussion of methods to assess hazards and advance the structural design of Generation III+ and IV nuclear power facilities.
Whittaker, who says the session was planned prior to the devastating Japanese earthquake and subsequent nuclear power failures, says it will be “a forward-looking session” that focuses on design of future nuclear power plants, rather than assessment of existing facilities. Presenters will discuss isolation and modular technologies, some of which have been developed at UB, for building new nuclear power plants.
Topics covered by other breakout sessions will include mitigation of hazards to buildings, bridges and other structures of steel, wood and concrete; electric power substations; wind turbines; nonstructural components; lifelines; and the general issue of improving resilience.
Efforts to improve extreme events education will be addressed, including a presentation on MCEER’s earthquake engineering seminar series in Haiti and platforms for sharing earthquake engineering and extreme event educational resources.
Representatives of NEES and each of the 14 NEES laboratories throughout the United States will be on hand to provide information and demonstrations on experimental, computational and online collaborative capabilities. Three workshops will showcase NEEShub features that facilitate research, online collaboration and data management.
Quake Summit 2011 also will include a continuing education seminar for practicing engineers that will review changes in earthquake-design standards for construction throughout the U.S. The seminar, titled “Changes to Seismic Provisions of ASCE/SEI 7-10: Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures—Ground Motion, Structural, Non-Structural Components,” is jointly sponsored by MCEER and the Buffalo section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. It will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 9.
The meeting will end on June 11 with an optional tour of the test facilities at Taylor Devices Inc., which develops large-scale viscous fluid dampers, and MCEER’s Experimental Campus for Large Infrastructure Protection, Sustainability and Enhancement (ECLIPSE) in Ashford, where full-scale bridge tests with seismic isolation bearings will be performed.
Quake Summit’s technical program chairs are Whittaker; Andre Filiatrault, MCEER director and UB professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering; and Thalia Anagnos, professor of general engineering, San José State University.
More than a dozen UB faculty and staff will participate in Quake Summit, many of whom have traveled to countries and regions devastated by extreme events as part of international efforts to improve the resilience of communities against earthquakes and other hazards. Disaster mitigation, response to extreme events and multi-hazard engineering are research strengths of the university identified in the UB 2020 strategic plan.
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