Who We Are
The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute is the leading non-profit membership organization dedicated to understanding earthquake risk and increasing earthquake resilience in communities worldwide. Our diverse multidisciplinary membership includes researchers, practitioners, and students in engineering, geoscience, social science, architecture, planning, government, emergency management, public health, and policy making. EERI has been bringing people and disciplines together since 1948.
Vision
A future where communities worldwide understand their earthquake risk and act to improve their resilience to earthquakes and other hazards.
Mission Statement
EERI provides members with the technical knowledge, leadership and advocacy skills, collaborative networks, and multidisciplinary context to achieve earthquake resilience in their communities worldwide.
Core Values & Guiding Principles
- Knowledge Development and Transfer
- EERI works at the intersection of earthquake research and practice.
- EERI enables the acquisition and sharing of knowledge through earthquake reconnaissance.
- EERI encourages both fundamental and applied earthquake research.
- EERI supports the development and dissemination of cutting-edge practice.
- EERI uses its members’ knowledge of natural hazard resilience to enhance its primary focus on earthquakes.
- EERI transforms knowledge into policy and action.
- Collaboration and Volunteerism
- EERI creates an environment where members exchange knowledge and proactively join together to achieve greater impact.
- EERI derives its strength from members who volunteer their time and expertise. In turn, members gain knowledge and connections through volunteerism.
- EERI fosters shared commitment among the diverse communities of professionals dedicated to earthquake and natural hazard resilience.
- EERI learns from and collaborates with other hazard communities.
- Leadership and Advocacy
- EERI inspires its members to serve their communities.
- EERI helps its members enhance their leadership and advocacy skills.
- EERI recognizes and celebrates leaders in our members’ professions.
- EERI forges consensus and speaks with a common voice in public forums and to legislative bodies.
- Inclusive Culture
- EERI ensures that all of its programming, activities and resources are made available to all qualified individuals, regardless of race, religion, sex, and other protected characteristics.
- EERI engages and values the contributions of its members at all stages of their careers, from students to early career professionals, from mid-career to retired professionals, so as to ensure that a spectrum of experience informs our mission.
- EERI strives to create and sustain an environment that yields a genuine sense of belonging for its members.
- EERI empowers its members to connect, learn, mentor, and lead.
- EERI’s decision-making is guided by respect for its members and its essential mission.
- Integrity and Stewardship
- EERI operates with high ethical standards, transparency, and professionalism.
- EERI develops professionally relevant and technically sound resources and tools.
- EERI makes decisions and engages in activities enabling its long-term financial and operational effectiveness.
Core Strategies
- Accelerate advancements in the science and practice of earthquake engineering and related fields contributing to communities resilient to earthquakes and other natural hazards.
- Improve understanding of the impact of earthquakes on the physical, social, economic, political, and cultural environments that constitute our communities.
- Serve and inspire members to do their best work as professionals and within their communities by building multidisciplinary networks, enhancing their leadership and advocacy skills, facilitating mentoring and training, and disseminating technical knowledge.
- Facilitate multidisciplinary conversations that provide the humanistic, societal, and technical contexts needed to achieve communities resilient to earthquakes and other natural hazards.
- Connect and engage members and leverage their skills to achieve EERI’s vision, mission, and priority goals.
- Bring together researchers and practitioners and partner organizations focused on realizing communities resilient to earthquakes and other natural hazards.
- Foster welcoming environment for all members and participants in EERI’s programs and activities.
- Expand and engage EERI’s robust network of student and regional chapters to enhance advocacy to communities worldwide.
- Identify, obtain, and effectively manage the financial and information resources needed to achieve EERI’s vision, mission, and priority goals.
2026-2028 Strategic Plan
EERI’s 2026–2028 Strategic Plan focuses on three interconnected goals that sustain the Institute’s vitality and expand its impact. Each goal is designed to build long-term value for our members, strengthen the Institute’s financial base, and amplify our role as the global leader in earthquake resilience.
- Engaged Membership – Enrich engagement, retention, and value for members at every career stage.
- Sustainable Resources – Ensure long-term financial strength and sustainability.
- Expanded Visibility – Amplify EERI’s presence and influence within and beyond the earthquake resilience community.
Goal 1: Engaged Membership
EERI’s members are the heart of its mission. The Engaged Membership goal focuses on enhancing engagement, professional growth, and retention through meaningful experiences, leadership development, and peer-to-peer connection. By 2027, EERI will strengthen its membership base, grow participation across chapters and disciplines, and build a clearer value proposition for every career stage.
A member of the Engaged Membership Task Force captured it well: “We want EERI to be the place where engineers, planners, and policymakers alike feel they belong—not just professionally, but personally.”
Goal 2: Sustainable Resources
EERI’s sustainability depends on a diversified, predictable, and mission-aligned funding structure. The goal of Sustainable Resources is to ensure that EERI maintains the financial strength necessary to invest in programs, support volunteers, and respond rapidly to emerging opportunities. By 2028, EERI will generate at least $2.1 million annually from a broad mix of sources: sponsorships, grants, membership dues, individual giving, publications, program revenue, and endowment draw-down.
As one Board member summarized during the 2025 goal-setting sessions, “Financial resilience is mission resilience—our ability to lead depends on our ability to sustain ourselves.”
Goal 3: Expanded Visibility
To advance earthquake resilience, EERI must be recognized not only within engineering circles but by policymakers, funders, and the public. The Expanded Visibility goal aims to enhance how EERI communicates its value, shares its members’ expertise, and influences decision-making. This effort reinforces the other two goals by attracting members, sponsors, and partners through a stronger brand presence.
As a committee member put it, “Our credibility is solid; now our visibility must match it.”
Integration & Impact
Engaged Membership, Sustainable Resources, and Expanded Visibility are mutually reinforcing strategic goals. Member engagement sustains advocacy and expertise; financial resilience fuels programmatic innovation; and visibility attracts the partnerships and resources that keep EERI thriving. Each of the responsible parties (i.e. committees led by Board members and others as appropriate plus staff members) will align its annual work plan with at least one of these goals, supported by transparent reporting and adaptive management.
EERI’s 2026–2028 Strategic Plan represents both continuity and evolution—preserving our values while adapting to a rapidly changing environment. Through this plan, EERI will nurture its vibrant membership, strengthen its financial foundation, and amplify its voice as the trusted leader in earthquake resilience worldwide.
Download the 2026-2028 EERI Strategic Plan to see the full list of objectives and expected outcomes for each goal.
History
EERI was founded in 1948 as a multidisciplinary national society of engineers, geoscientists, building officials, and architects dedicated to advancing the science and practice of earthquake engineering and reducing the impacts of earthquakes on society. The founding members came together from teaching, research, governmental regulation, and practice in engineering, and architecture with the intention to establish a research institution. These plans never came to pass. Instead, EERI functioned as a clearinghouse for research information and policymaking, with funds for research channeled to the universities. For many years, EERI remained a small, exclusive organization of scientists and engineers with an invitational membership.
In 1973 EERI opened its doors to applications from all who had a serious commitment to earthquake engineering. The number of members jumped from 126 in 1973 to 721 within five years, thereby providing a vital forum for communication among a wide range of earthquake specialists.
Today, EERI is the leading non-profit membership organization dedicated to understanding earthquake risk and increasing earthquake resilience in communities worldwide with thousands of members located in nearly every U.S. state and numerous countries around the world. Our members are organized into chapters, committees, and projects that conduct volunteer activities to achieve our mission, supported by a very small adminstrative staff located in Oakland, California.
A more complete history of EERI was written by Susan Tubbesing and Thalia Anagnos for the 14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering.
