YMC Blog

On September 10, 2024, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) Young Members Committee (YMC) hosted an insightful Lightning Talks Seminar, organized by Dr. Ken Hudson. The event brought together over 20 young professionals to present fast-paced, high-impact talks on critical topics related to earthquake engineering and seismic resilience.

The event provided a platform for the young researchers and practitioners listed below to share their work and spark engaging discussions around seismic resilience and earthquake engineering. The diversity of topics—from ethics and policy to advanced engineering solutions—reflected the multidisciplinary approach required to tackle the challenges posed by earthquakes.

Attendees left the session with fresh insights into the future of earthquake engineering, building resilience, and a deeper appreciation for the innovative work being done to protect communities from seismic hazards.

We look forward to more such events in the future, where knowledge-sharing can continue to shape safer, more resilient built environments.

Speakers and Presentation Highlights

Maria Jose Echeverria – California State University, Sacramento

Topic: Enhancing Seismic Resilience: The Impact of Hazard-Resistant Building Practices on Alaskan Wood Frame Houses

Abstract: This study examines the performance implications of compliance with building code seismic requirements for Alaskan housing. While building codes and standards offer strategies for achieving the safety and resilience of structures, and most people care about and expect safe housing, adherence to these strategies is inconsistent or absent in many places. For example, in Alaska, which is at risk from the significant hazard of earthquakes common in the Pacific Northwest, some jurisdictions mandate and enforce modern codes with plan reviews and inspections. However, others lack the capacity or regulatory will to define and regulate housing construction, which is concerning due to the state's seismic risk. This study aims to scrutinize the implications of non-compliance with codes by examining key hazard-resistant building practices in Alaska and assessing their impact on seismic risk mitigation. Through fieldwork and interviews, the study identifies common deficiencies such as inadequate shear wall quantities and distributions, incorrect aspect ratios for shear walls, inappropriate thicknesses for wood structural panels, and inadequate fastening. By evaluating these practices across Alaskan housing typologies modeled in OpenSees, the study measures potential improvements in safety and resilience through compliance.

Ken Hudson – Hudson Geotechnics

Topic: Application and Adaptation of Global Ground Motion Models to the Eastern Caribbean Lesser Antilles

Abstract: The Lesser Antilles region of the eastern Caribbean experiences seismicity from shallow crustal earthquakes in active tectonic regions, subduction earthquakes (both interface and intraslab), and volcanic zone earthquakes. A regional study by Bozzoni et al. (2011) has formed the basis for probabilistic seismic hazard analyses (PSHA) in recent years. The ground motion models (GMMs) used in those PSHA studies were published between 1997 and 2008, were originally intended for global or regional (Japan) applications, and were not checked or calibrated using data from the eastern Caribbean region. Consequently, there is unquantified and therefore potentially large uncertainty associated with the application of those models to the region.

Our work aims to utilize regional data to test more recent global GMMs, from the NGA-West2 and NGA-Subduction projects, against eastern Caribbean regional data. We specifically aim to evaluate the effectiveness of the GMMs’ source, path, and site relationships for this region. We gather earthquake catalog data and associated recordings (including recording station properties), process the ground motions, compute intensity measures (IMs), and develop necessary source, path, and site metadata. We perform mixed effects residuals analyses for shallow crustal and subduction events. The residuals are partitioned into overall bias, event terms, and within-event residuals and are examined for trends with source, path, and site terms. Finally, adjustments to the GMM model coefficients and weighting for use in logic trees are recommended for the region.

Gah-Kai Leung – University of Warwick

Topic: The Ethics of Building Regulations in Earthquake Engineering and Policy

Abstract: This paper considers the ethical issues in earthquake construction codes. In Section 1, I canvass three important components that earthquake engineers and architects have to account for, when they design structures to resist earthquakes: (i) ground motion intensity; (ii) damage state; (iii) recovery state. Section 2 turns to the normative question of what counts as a fair level of protection. Drawing on rights-based principles of justice, I suggest that extant practice in the International Building Code is too permissive with respect to the fair level of protection. Section 3 considers the issue of retrofitting and who should pay for the cost of protection when retrofitting is required (i.e. to bring a particular structure up to the fair level of protection). I disentangle cases where it is possible to retrofit up to the fair level of protection versus cases where such retrofitting is not possible. In the latter cases, I suggest that citizens may demand compensation to ensure that structures are retrofitted appropriately or in the event that the structure suffers severe damage or collapses altogether. This section also considers responsibility-sensitive principles of justice and how they bear on the question of retrofitting.

Polly Murray – University of Alaska Anchorage

Topic: Residential Building Code Compliance and Seismic Risk

Abstract: This work examines the effect of common construction deficiencies on the seismic risk of wood-frame houses. In 2018 a Mw 7.1 earthquake shook the most populous region of Alaska, affecting homes in Anchorage and the surrounding region. There were higher rates of damage in regions where building codes are not enforced, but shaking appears to have been similar to measured shaking intensity within the code-enforcement zone. Inspectors noted frequent, common deficiencies in residential construction that may have contributed to the higher rates of damage. In this study, we tested a suite of wood shear walls that are representative of typical construction practices, and used those test results to calibrate nonlinear models. We then ran Incremental Dynamic Analysis of houses with various wall configurations to identify the relative collapse risk between those that comply with building codes and those that do not.

Pedram Mortazavi – University of Minnesota

Topic: Resilient Eccentrically Braced Frames with Cast Steel Replaceable Modular Yielding Links

Abstract: This presentation provides an overview of the design and experimental validation of Eccentrically Braced Frames (EBFs) equipped with novel cast steel replaceable modular yielding links. The proposed cast steel links primarily aim to enhance the resilience of EBFs under earthquakes and eliminate undesirable failure modes, which are observed in EBFs with conventional and replaceable wide-flange links. In addition, cast steel links promote modular construction and simplify the design process of EBFs. The performance of the proposed yielding links is validated through thirteen large-scale quasi-static tests and twelve pseudo-dynamic hybrid simulations. The results of the experimental program demonstrated highly enhanced ductility and ultra-low-cycle fatigue life for the proposed links, achieving up to 0.21 radians of link rotation under the AISC loading protocol, while all other structural elements remained undamaged.

Ryan Hoult – Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Topic: Reinforced Concrete Walls: Current Insights and Future Directions

Abstract: Reinforced concrete walls are the most widely used lateral load-resisting elements globally. However, there is limited experimental data on the seismic performance of non-rectangular walls, such as the commonly used U-shaped core walls. I have led several experimental research campaigns to test these critical structures using both quasi-static and dynamic (shake table) methods. Utilizing state-of-the-art instrumentation for data acquisition, these studies provide new insights and quantitatively assess phenomena that were previously understood only qualitatively. Future research will explore the use of innovative reinforcement materials to enhance the performance and resilience of these structures during earthquakes.

Gitanjali Bhattacharjee – Exponent

Topic: Applications of Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) in Utility Risk Modeling

Abstract: The performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) framework is a powerful tool with applications beyond assessing the seismic risk of buildings and infrastructure networks. In this talk, I’ll discuss how my colleagues and I have applied foundational principles in PBEE – namely, the concepts of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability – to assess the risks associated with components of electric and gas utility networks and empower asset managers to make better, risk-informed decisions about the systems for which they are responsible. The probabilistic, site-specific models that I’ll discuss are: (1) a method for computing the rate of damage of buried pipelines due to lightning- and fault-initiated subsoil arcs from nearby transmission towers or poles; and (2) a method for computing the rate of contamination-induced insulator flashover, based on historical or seasonal environmental data.

Author: Ashley Morales-Cartagena, MSc The Dominican Republic (DR) is considered a hotspot for disasters resulting from natural hazards. According to the World Bank from 1980 to 2008 disasters affected 2.65 million people in the DR. We have learned from more frequent hydro-meteorological disasters, however, earthquakes have been less frequent, and there is no ‘culture of preparedness’ for earthquakes. While the scientific community has long anticipated the “Big One”, the seismic risk has not been adequately communicated to the public. It is up to the emerging generation of leaders in risk reduction and mitigation to ensure the country’s resilience to future earthquakes. Academia, industry, and civic organizations are working to identify ways to help build an earthquake-resilient country. In this blog post, Ashley discusses seismicity and the risk profile in the DR, and ongoing work to understand and reduce earthquake risk, and academic-government organizations tackling the challenges of communicating and reducing earthquake risk.

Author: Maha Kenawy, Ph.D., University of Nevada, Reno The advent of performance-based earthquake engineering placed large emphasis on quantifying extreme limit states of structures. Predicting structural performance under extreme events relies upon the availability of sophisticated yet efficient numerical tools which can capture the highly nonlinear behavior of structures, and particularly the deterioration of structural components. This article looks at the numerical modeling approaches employed today in simulating the response of reinforced concrete structures to extreme loads, and highlights some of the existing gaps and novel frameworks that were recently developed to advance the current state of structural modeling.

Author: Dustin Cook, P.E., Ph.D. Candidate, University of Colorado Boulder One of the pressing challenges of new and evolving seismic risk assessment methods is the need to validate, confirm, and/or verify the outcome of these assessments to support their broader use. A recent collaborative study between the University of Colorado Boulder and the Haselton Baker Risk Group performs a scenario assessment of over 2.6 million buildings to benchmark losses from FEMA P-58 with observed losses from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. This comparison indicates that, while results from FEMA P-58 are heavily dependent upon modeling decisions, the method can be used to provide accurate predictions of post-earthquake economic losses.

Author: Yolanda C. Lin, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Disaster Analytics for Society Lab at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. After an earthquake, earthquake engineers and scientists work tirelessly to understand exactly the mechanisms of what happened, what was damaged, who was affected, how we can best move forward. In the process, we typically strive to identify what valuable lessons-learned can be harnessed from the event, so that a future, similar event may be safer and less impactful the next time around. But, why restrict ourselves to learning from our past disasters only exactly as they unfolded? To address this, we are formalizing a framework to incorporate the use of counterfactual thinking to take a second look at past disasters and uncover additional lessons-learned that we may have missed before.

Author: Christine Z. Beyzaei, Ph.D., Senior Engineer, Exponent The EERI Learning from Earthquakes (LFE) Travel Study Program provides the opportunity for young professionals to visit areas previously impacted by earthquakes and observe the long-term recovery efforts and resiliency measures implemented in the years following the earthquake event. The 2019 LFE Travel Study program brought a group of 25 young professionals to New Zealand, to observe recovery following the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence and the 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake. The program was co-hosted by EERI and QuakeCoRe (a NZ Crown Research Institute), with participants from around the world comprising a diverse, multidisciplinary group.

Author: Ezra Jampole, Ph.D., P.E., Senior Engineer, Exponent On 07 November 2016 (01:44:25 UTC) a M5.0 earthquake devastated the historic downtown of Cushing, Oklahoma. Within a week of the earthquake, EERI sent a reconnaissance team to Cushing to document the damage to the built environment and implement a business resilience survey in the historic downtown. The team found that unreinforced masonry buildings sustained significant damage, including out-of-plumbness, partial collapses, and extensive façade damage, effectively closing the downtown. More than two years after the earthquake, Ezra Jampole returned to Cushing’s historic downtown to observe how the community had rebuilt following the earthquake. Numerous buildings have been demolished and many buildings sit unrepaired.