The Organizing Committee for the 9th U.S. National and 10th Canadian Conference on Earthquake Engineering , to be held in Toronto, Canada July 25 - 29, 2010, invites you to submit an abstract. Abstracts (500 words or less) must be submitted online at submissions.miracd.com/2010eqconf by March 31, 2009.

Download 2nd Announcement (270kB)

Earthquake Risk Reduction: Addressing the Unmet Challenges -- The Need for an Interdisciplinary Research Approach

 This 30+-page paper prepared by an EERI Working Group addresses complex vulnerabilities in earthquake risk reduction and the role that interdisciplinary research plays to improve our understanding of vulnerabilities and potential solutions. The nature of earthquake risk reduction dictates that new research opportunities and approaches be identified. The 13 recommendations offered in this paper are targeted at many audiences, including NSF and other potential funding agencies, policy makers in executive and legislative branches of various levels of government, universities and academic researchers, and professional societies that support the earthquake risk reduction community. While the paper focuses on earthquake issues, the lessons of disaster vulnerability are widely applicable to hurricanes, floods and other disasters.

• Download paper (2.3MB)

Download APSS2009 flyer (836kb).

The NSF-funded Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers Project is seeking applicants for 16 new junior faculty fellowships.  This the third round of a successful, intensive, two-year mentoring and training program that introduces junior faculty to the study of natural, technological, and social hazards and disasters.  This round is different in that the project is particularly seeking junior engineering professors who are working at the intersection of engineering and social science. 

Contributions of Earthquake Engineering to Protecting Communities and Critical Infrastructure from Multihazards
This 62-page report lays out the wide-ranging contributions of earthquake engineering that enhance public safety and improve the protection of U.S. communities from hazards beyond earthquakes. Four categories are chosen to identify major contributions and present representative examples: planning, advanced technologies, emergency response, and community engagement. The goals of the report are to help the earthquake community define its role in a multihazard world with an understanding of its contributions to multihazard mitigation, and to make the general public, governmental agencies, and elected representatives and their staffs aware of the impact and value of their investments in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP). Authors: Thomas D. O’Rourke, Thomas Holzer, Christopher Rojahn, and Kathleen Tierney.

Download PDF (12Mb)

Click here to submit your vote.

You must submit your online ballot prior to the closing of the polls on January 1, 2009.

If you prefer to vote by paper ballot, please e-mail Juliane Lane at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it no later than December 15, 2008, or call 510/451-0905.

George W. Housner, considered the father of earthquake engineering, passed away on November 10 at the age of 97. Housner died of natural causes in Pasadena, California. Housner was Braun Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Advancing Earthquake Reconnaissance in MS Virtual Earth

An international consortium, including EERI, has supported the development of a first of its kind “social networking tool” for earthquake impact assessment - an online Virtual Disaster Viewer (VDV). Developed in conjunction with Microsoft Virtual Earth, VDV represents an exciting combination of new technologies, including satellite imagery-based damage and situation assessments by international teams of expert engineers, along with geo-referenced ground photographs and videos collected by field teams. VDV represents a new way of remotely viewing a disaster area and generating preliminary estimates of earthquake damage, when access to the affected area is restricted. It is currently being tested by a small group of EERI members, as well as representatives from other organizations in the consortium.

This new tool, which can be viewed here , provides a virtual experience of the disaster situation, for events where there is limited access to the disaster zone, and when experts are unable to visit themselves. It offers an alternative method of rapid and robust damage assessment, based on expert interpretation of satellite imagery, which can be validated later as field observations are made.