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UB strong in "extreme events"
UB Council hears overview of work
By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor
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While many institutions have "jumped on the bandwagon" of "extreme events" research since Sept. 11, UB has been a leader in the field for many years and is continuing to build on its already existing strengths.
That was the message faculty members leading planning efforts for the "Extreme Events: Mitigation and Response" strategic strength gave members of the UB Council at its meeting on Monday.
"This is our forte; this is the stuff we've been doing for years. This is building on a strength," said Michel Bruneau, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering, and director of UB's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research.
Bruneau and Ernest Sternberg, professor of urban and regional planning in the School of Architecture and Planning, provided an overview of the strategic strength, one of 10 that have been identified as part of the UB 2020 institutional planning process.
Sternberg defined an extreme event as "something that has a relatively rapid onset, and because of this rapid onset, a rapid reorganization of society and emergency services must take place."
In the case of extreme events, UB researchers are concerned about mitigation—reducing the likelihood of the intensity of an event—as well as preparedness—being ready to respond to the event itself, he said.
UB's strength in the field begins with its familiarity with the protection of facilities and lifelines, Sternberg said. "It's what we specialize in here," he said, pointing to the years of work of MCEER researchers.
"Earthquake engineering is not really about earthquakes; it's really about structural dynamics—how equipment and buildings behave under various kinds of stresses," whether that stress is chemical, from an earthquake or a bomb blast.
Sternberg noted that the Department of Homeland Security has identified six "critical mission areas."
"Protecting critical infrastructure is one of them," he said, noting that this infrastructure consists of lifelines, like electrical power, transportation and telecommunications, and facilities, such as hospitals, schools and high-occupancy buildings, like sports arenas.
"Much of what it takes to protect the country will involve protecting critical infrastructure from purposeful and natural events," he said. "We believe we have a special capability of providing something, contributing to the country with respect to this subject."
After 9/11, "it hit us that we really had to go into more than just earthquake engineering," Bruneau added, noting that the terrorist attack "happened on our home turf, New York State. We felt compelled to act and react." MCEER researchers studied the collapse of the World Trade Center and held conferences in New York City that brought experts together "to advance and centralize disaster resilience on the global scale," he said. UB researchers since have moved into studying all kinds of disasters, the most recent being Hurricane Katrina.
Both Sternberg and Bruneau stressed that tackling the field of "extreme events" requires interdisciplinary cooperation.
"To make an important, significant contribution to solving some of the problems related to that, we need a holistic approach; we need to bring together experts from multiple disciplines who are going to work together," Bruneau said.
Sternberg noted that faculty members from throughout the university have been brought into the project, including those from social work, public health, the medical school and urban planning.
"We're trying to create a collaborative environment," Bruneau added. "We bring entities together as projects arise. The strategic strength is helping to foster interdepartmental, interdisciplinary collaboration across the campus."
He cited several points that he says give UB a significant advantage in the field:
Researchers are building on strengths already at UB. "We have a number of unique, nationally and internationally recognized centers and schools already working on this," he said. Besides MCEER, they include the National Center for Geographical Information and Analysis, the Center for Computational Research and the Research Institute on Safety and Security in Transportation, among others in a long list cited by Bruneau.
UB already is working with many key agencies that are important in the field. For example, he said that MCEER recently was asked to write a white paper for the Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction, part of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, an executive office of the president.
UB is familiar with the field; as noted previously, the university is not "jumping on the bandwagon."
UB researchers have experience working across departments and disciplines, a key element to successful work in field.
In other business at Monday's meeting, Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, described the Oct. 17 visit by eight SUNY administrators, including Provost Peter D. Salins, to discuss UB's Mission Review II document.
Tripathi said the discussion was based on the UB 2020 planning effort, with UB administrators defining the university's goals through the strategic strengths as outlined in the UB 2020 planning initiative.
He noted that the feedback from the SUNY team on UB's presentation "was some of the best I've seen."
Tripathi said work will begin early in the new year on the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with SUNY that will spell out how UB is to achieve its stated goals.
Monday's meeting also featured remarks by President John B. Simpson focusing on the changing role of higher education, both nationally and globally, and how UB is addressing the issue.
Among the short-term goals he cited were increasing the faculty, growing the institution by 5,000 students and increasing sponsored research.
"The university is good business," Simpson said, noting that the better the university, the larger its effect on the local economy, the culture and the local educational enterprise.
"As with any business, the path to betterment is resource dependent," he said. The UB 2020 planning process "allows us to optimize the use of resources we now have and to plan successfully about where we're going to go and how we're going to get there."