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)

William A. Anderson, recently retired Associate Executive Director of the Division on Earth and Life Studies at the National Research Council, Washington, D.C., and Reginald DesRoches, Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, were elected the newest members of the Board of Directors in the 2009 election.

Norman A. Abrahamson, a senior engineering seismologist in the Geosciences Department at Pacific Gas and Electric Company in San Francisco, is EERI’s 2009 Distinguished Lecturer. He will present his lecture on the topic of “The State of the Practice of Seismic Hazard Analysis: From the Good to the Bad” for the first time during EERI’s 61st Annual Meeting in February 2009 in Salt Lake City.

An EERI member since 1984, Abrahamson specializes in ground motion assessments and seismic hazard assessments for important engineered structures and systems, including dams, bridges, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste repositories, water and gas pipelines, rail lines, ports, landfills, hospitals, electric substations, and office buildings.

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.

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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.

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