Earthquake Engineering Research Institute: Progress Report

The theme of the 56th EERI Annual Meeting meeting is Ten Years After the Northridge Earthquake. It focuses on lessons learned from the Northridge earthquake and the evolution of earthquake risk reduction since 1994.

By any standard, the Northridge earthquake was a watershed in earthquake mitigation practice. Direct economic losses from the Northridge earthquake were in excess of $40 billion. The scale of the economic consequences and problems that surfaced with respect to welded steel frame buildings, woodframe housing, and building and business losses galvanized partnerships between universities, industry, and government to investigate and provide answers to the questions that were generated by the earthquake’s effects. The consequences of these collaborative activities are improved codes, inspection procedures, and construction practices for steel and timber buildings. Performance-based design is a direct outgrowth of the Northridge earthquake, as is the expanded network of digital, broadband strong motion instruments deployed by the geoscience community. The upgraded seismic network grew from the TriNet system in southern California to the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) currently being implemented across the country. The Northridge earthquake led to substantial advances by social scientists in understanding earthquake impacts on local communities and small businesses. At the same time, distributed strong motion data and damage patterns in water supply, electric power, and transportation systems coalesced into the first truly global view of lifeline performance in the context of the seismic and geotechnical factors that drive ground response.

One year later, a severe earthquake struck Kobe, Japan, causing over $100 billion in direct damage to buildings and facilities. There were more than 5500 deaths in a country that, like the U.S., is among the most technologically advanced in the world. Together, the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes showed the enormous scale of damage resulting from urban earthquake disasters. They also led to an appreciation of near source effects and procedures for characterizing the large pulses in acceleration and velocity so important for the performance of buildings and lifelines relatively close to the location of a fault rupture.

Gathering in Los Angeles gives us the opportunity to reassess our progress since the Northridge earthquake and to consider the vision and goals of EERI that were articulated by the Board of Directors in 2001:

EERI Vision: A world in which potential earthquake losses are understood and steps have been taken to reduce them to an acceptable level.

EERI’s Role: EERI is recognized as the authoritative source for earthquake risk reduction information in the U.S. and, in partnership with other nations, will develop earthquake risk reduction information worldwide.

Summary of EERI’s Five Year Goals for 2001-2005 (an annotated version is posted on a separate page of this web site):

Strengthen EERI’s position as the primary advocate of earthquake safety and risk reduction.
Identify and support seismic advocates at all levels of society and in all the disciplines.
Galvanize a cadre of seismic risk reduction experts with lessons that are learned in earthquakes.
Generate government support for all forms of pre- and post-earthquake-mitigation.
Achieve financial independence.

Progress has been made in all areas, and I will illustrate this progress by reporting on activities related to NEHRP Reauthorization, Learning from Earthquakes, EERI’s international activities program, the World Housing Encyclopedia, Earthquake Spectra, and EERI Endowment projects.

NEHRP REAUTHORIZATION
The National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP) is the backbone for protecting citizens from the deadly and economically disruptive effects of earthquakes and for seismic risk reduction in the U.S. That is why EERI has been engaged in advocating and advancing the reauthorization of NEHRP. During this last year, the advocacy and interaction with members of Congress reached a level unparalleled in the history of the Institute. It also produced results.

EERI involvement with NEHRP reauthorization last year began in February 2003, at the NEHRP Roundtable Forum, convened by the NRC Disaster Roundtable in Washington, DC. Several EERI members made presentations at this forum, which was very important in communicating NEHRP accomplishments to Congressional staff. After the forum, the NEHRP Coalition was revitalized under joint chairs Chris Poland, representing EERI, and Brian Pallasch, representing the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The NEHRP Coalition is an advocacy group, representing EERI, ASCE, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Architects, American Society of Public Administrators, Applied Technology Council, National Fire Protection Agency, Portland

Cement Association, Seismological Society of America, World Institute for Disaster Risk Management, and others. The NEHRP Coalition organized several Congressional staff briefings throughout the spring and early summer.

Testimony was held before the Subcommittee on Basic Research of the House of Representatives Committee on Science in May 2003. Those invited to testify were: Anthony Lowe, DHS, FEMA; Bob Olson, Robert Olson Associates; Lloyd Cluff, PG&E; Larry Reaveley, University of Utah; and me. My testimony on behalf of EERI can be found at the EERI web Site www.eeri.org. It traces the evolution of NEHRP, explains NEHRP benefits, and recommends improvements, all referenced to a list of significant publications germane to NEHRP.

During Congressional staff briefings and during and after the May NEHRP testimony, the EERI Research and Outreach Plan, Securing Society Against Catastrophic Earthquake Losses, was a resource of exceptional value. It demonstrates that the earthquake community has a vision and viable plan for R&D. It was very helpful in gaining credibility with key Congressional staff and elected representatives.

Through the summer, EERI worked with its partners in the NEHRP Coalition to develop an authorization bill with the Subcommittee on Basic Research, which is the originating body for this legislation. EERI was instrumental in crafting the bill and in obtaining increased levels of funding for NEHRP. In the fall of 2003, the House of Representatives passed HR 2608, reauthorizing NEHRP (http://www.eeri.org/news/nehrp/nehrp.pdf). An excellent report (Report 108-246) that explains the bill may be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery. HR 2608 authorizes increased funding from the current total of about $110 M/ year to over $196 M/ year over a three-year period in which the increase would be phased in. This represents a nearly 80% increase in total authorized support. The bill calls for the lead agency to change from DHS/FEMA to NIST, and for a strengthened external advisory board.

The Senate was not able to attend to the NEHRP reauthorization bill in the last legislative session due to an extremely busy schedule, but will take up the bill in the current session. The NEHRP Coalition organized a briefing of the staff of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on January 23, 2004 in Washington, DC. On the basis of this briefing, we are optimistic that there will be positive action from the Senate early in the legislative session.

In pursuing NEHRP reauthorization, EERI has strengthened its relationships with all NEHRP agencies. It maintains a strong, productive relationship with DHS/FEMA and NSF, and has developed an excellent working relationship with USGS and the geoscience community. I met personally with Ardent Bement, Director of NIST, in September 2003, and am convinced that NIST will be able to provide the appropriate leadership for NEHRP, provided that the authorized funding is appropriated. Authorization and appropriation of the requisite funding for a strong and viable NEHRP are primary goals of EERI in the forthcoming year.

LEARNING FROM EARTHQUAKES
The Learning from Earthquakes Program, funded by the National Science Foundation, has been quite active during the past year. A reconnaissance team has just returned from Bam, Iran, and will be working with Iranian colleagues to produce a Newsletter insert and a more extensive report over the next few months. Reconnaissance activity after the December 22nd earthquake in San Simeon, California, was coordinated through an ftp site and professors at Cal Poly. A preliminary report is forthcoming in another month or so. Reconnaissance reports that have been prepared and sent to members include reports on the earthquakes in Bingol, Turkey; Boumerdes, Algeria; Lefkada, Greece; and Tockachi, Japan. Three special issues of Earthquake Spectra are under preparation: Molise, Italy; Denali, Alaska; and Colima, Mexico. A Lessons Learned over Time report on the performance of bridges in the 1999 Turkey earthquake was sent to all members, and another in this series on the performance of adobe structures in El Salvador will soon be ready and will be published simultaneously in Spanish and English. A reconnaissance trip to document recovery and rebuilding in Gujarat, India, was conducted, identifying important lessons, particularly for seismic risk areas with infrequent but high consequence events, such as mid-America or the northeast. A report on the findings from this trip is in publication.

In addition to these publications, there are a number of ongoing activities underway in the LFE program:

Two Beyond Reconnaissance Grants have been funded documenting reconstruction in Colima, Mexico, and identifying data collection issues and the usefulness of such data in identifying damage to RC and masonry structures in the Molise, Italy earthquake. Both reports are expected in spring 2005.
A new LFE web site has been developed that includes pdf files of all preliminary and Newsletter reports for earthquakes investigated by EERI members. Plans are underway to begin posting short, streaming video files as well (both on training and from reconnaissance trips).
The IT Committee has appointed a subcommittee of EERI members to investigate the use of remote sensing technology in post-earthquake reconnaissance. This technology was used both after the Algeria and Iran earthquakes.
An oversight committee was created to follow-up on preliminary recommendations on collection and management of earthquake data. Task forces will address damage data collection, secondary data collection, inventory data and repository development. Progress also continues on developing an electronic post-earthquake data collection system.
EERI has also been participating in a set of exercises with the NEHRP agencies to test the Plan to Coordinate NEHRP Post-Earthquake Investigations. This has been an opportunity for EERI to work through its immediate post-earthquake procedures, both with the California Clearinghouse and with the NEHRP agencies.
Stronger links have been forged between the LFE program and the World Housing Encyclopedia, sharing information across the two web sites, and encouraging a specific focus on housing performance in recent reconnaissance activities.

SPECTRA AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS
The EERI editorial staff, Editorial Board, and Publications Policy Committee continue to work hard to ensure that EERI benefits from high quality electronic publishing and is at the forefront of on-line access and cross-referencing services for its professional quarterly journal, Earthquake Spectra. Thanks are extended to Farzad Naeim, Spectra Editor, and Nancy Sutherland, Managing Editor at the EERI office, for enhancing our electronic publishing and streamlining the review process for Spectra. The Institute enjoys integrated publication of the online and hard copy editions of Spectra on the Online Journal Publication Services (OJPS) platform of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) http://ojps.aip.org/EarthquakeSpectra/; listing of Spectra in the prestigious Science Citation Expanded® Index and on the Web of Science maintained by the Institute for Scientific Information.

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM
EERI organized and chartered a new International Activities Committee (IAC) in 2002. Membership includes earthquake experts from a variety of countries and engineering disciplines. The high priority international activities for EERI include cooperative agreements with sister organizations around the world, collaboration with the international community on the Learning from Earthquakes Program, cooperative memberships, expansion of EERI Mitigation Resource Center services to cover international issues, translations of key publications and text at web sites, and organization of seminars and conferences.

In November 2002, EERI and the Mexican Society for Earthquake Engineering signed the first cooperative agreement under the International Program. The agreement was tailored to areas of common interest between the United States and Mexico, including topics related to their common border.

In January 2004, Kenji Ishihara, President of the Japanese Association for Earthquake Engineering (JAEE) and I, as EERI’s representative, signed a cooperative agreement in Berkeley, California, during the 11th International Conference on Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering. Thanks are extended to Ray Seed and the organizing committee of the conference for accommodating the signing ceremony in the conference program. Craig Comartin, EERI President-Elect, will serve as U.S. co-chair of the special committee being organized to guide collaboration and implementation of this agreement with our Japanese colleagues. One of the first orders of business will be participation in the International Symposium on Earthquake Engineering Commemorating the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster in Tokyo and Kobe, Japan, January 11-16, 2005.

Our international activities have been extended to student chapters. The first international student chapter has been established at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

WORLD HOUSING ENCYCLOPEDIA
The World Housing Encyclopedia (WHE) is a web-based, searchable database and information resource on seismic construction and housing practices around the world at www.world-housing.net. The database continues to grow, with 103 reports now available online from 34 countries. Reports from Japan, Romania, Slovenia, Argentina, Portugal, Turkey, and Algeria were added in 2003.

One of the new 2003 project activities was the development of online tutorials related to various construction practices. This tutorial addresses adobe construction and techniques for improving the performance of this vulnerable construction type in earthquakes. It can be viewed at http://www.world-housing.net/tutorials/adobetutorial/adobetutorial.asp. The adobe tutorial has been translated into Spanish. There are plans to develop similar tutorials for each major construction type represented in the encyclopedia, including confined masonry, unreinforced brick masonry, stone masonry, nonductile reinforced concrete frame construction, and wood construction.

The project web site continues to grow as an online repository of information related to mitigation of building and especially housing losses in earthquakes. The General Resources page contains links to PDF reports and other web sites related to general earthquake information, earthquake-resistant design technology, FEMA documents, and several project-related presentations.

The WHE took a major step in its transition from an Endowment Fund sponsored project to an EERI activity in January 2003. In March 2003, a new Editorial Board was established to replace the management committee that guided initial development of the project from 2000 to 2002. The new Editorial Board (25 members in total from 19 countries) is led by Svetlana Brzev as the Editor-in-Chief (to continue until August 2004) and Marjorie Greene as Managing Editor. It is served by six Associate Editors drawn from major geographic regions throughout the world: Dina D’Ayala-Europe, Sudhir Jain-Asia, Marcial Blondet-Latin America, Mauro Sassu and Mohammed Farsi-Africa, Craig Comartin–North America and Oceania, and four at-large editors: Farzad Naeim, Shel Cherry, Jelena Pantelic, and Laura Samant, and an editorial board with geographic representation from around the world.

ENDOWMENT PROJECTS
The EERI Endowment Committee is sponsoring a project to develop guidelines that can be used across the U.S. to create scenarios for planning purposes and enhancing awareness of seismic risk at the community level. The idea is to generate generic guidelines that are calibrated to the practical and institutional constraints that actually occur during this process. Calibration is performed by tracking and documenting the

development of an actual earthquake scenario at a location of serious, infrequent earthquakes. Seattle, Washington was chosen as the location for developing the guidelines. The EERI endowment is supporting both the development of the generic guidelines and the seismic scenario for Seattle. Funds have also been leveraged from the EERI/FEMA Cooperative Agreement to underwrite the development of the scenario. In this way, the local community benefits from EERI assistance, and work in the local community is leveraged into generic guidelines that aid communities nationwide in similar undertakings. The project is drawing to a conclusion and is expected to produce the scenario and guidelines in the coming year under the excellent guidance of Bill Iwan, Endowment Committee representative and Don Ballantyne, EERI Board contact.

Another Endowment project, which leverages funds from EERI’s Cooperative Agreement with FEMA, is underway to explore the contributions of earthquake engineering. The purpose of this study is to show how investments in earthquake engineering have resulted in technical advances that apply beyond earthquakes to other hazards, civil infrastructure, applied information technology, and homeland security. Some of the many examples include passive/active building control for wind hazards, advanced GIS for lifeline systems and civil infrastructure management, fiber-reinforced polymers for bridge/building repair and restoration, ATC 20 inspection of buildings protocol applied after the World Trade Center (WTC) Disaster, the benefits following the WTC Disaster of guidelines for hardening telecommunication equipment from earthquake studies, seismic monitoring of nuclear tests, etc. Such a document is critical for pointing out the value and far-ranging consequences of earthquake engineering research and implementation for federal agencies, Congress, and state/local governments. The document will also address future directions of earthquake engineering and its potential to contribute to multi-hazards, civil infrastructure, and homeland security. Such a document will be extremely valuable to justify continued and expanded support for the earthquake engineering community. It will help show the relevance of earthquake engineering to the U.S. technical infrastructure. A workshop associated with this project was held in June 2003, and the resulting report is in preparation. The Steering Committee consists of Bill Iwan, Chris Rojahn, Kathleen Tierney, Tom Holzer, and me.

Two additional Endowment projects in the coming year will provide support for the Northern California Chapter in developing earthquake mitigation projects in conjunction with Quake 06, and “Small Grants for Developing Countries” that will build capacity and leadership in developing countries in support of local risk reduction programs. The Endowment Committee is also exploring ways to develop a documentary film and coordinate with the media. Thanks are extended to Farzad Naeim and Rich Eisner, former and current chairs of this committee.

I hope this progress report is helpful in providing an informative capsule view of selected EERI activities. I thank Svetlana Brzev and Marjorie Greene for providing material incorporated directly in this progress report and encourage you to visit the EERI web site, www.eeri.org. There you will learn about many other EERI programs, including EERI student and regional chapter activities, the fellowship programs sponsored by the

EERI/FEMA Cooperative Agreement, current publications, A/V materials and advocacy materials to help you play an active role in the reauthorization process.

The institute is a very active organization, dedicated to high-quality service and products for its members. It is also dedicated to seismic risk reduction and vigorous advocacy to reduce such risks. We hope you will join us as an active participant in these activities.

Please enjoy the Annual Meeting, and use it as an opportunity to learn, engage colleagues, and increase your awareness of EERI activities. We hope it will be a time of positive interaction and renewed commitment to achieving seismic safety across the globe.