Bruce Maison

Bruce Maison, associate civil engineer at the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD), has been selected as the 2007 Professional Fellow in Earthquake Hazard Reduction, awarded by EERI under a cooperative program funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. The fellowship is designed to provide an opportunity for a practicing professional to gain greater skills and broader expertise in earthquake risk reduction. The Institute extends thanks to the review committee, consisting of Thalia Anagnos, San Jose State University; Craig Comartin, CD Comartin, Inc; Marshall Lew, MACTEC Engineering; and Farzad Naeim, John A. Martin & Associates.

Maison will work in the United States and Japan to correlate performance-based methodology with tests of Japanese buildings to determine (1) how well current and proposed methods describe actual collapse, (2) whether certain methods are consistently at odds with actual performance in experiments, and (3) whether practical improvements to current methods can be suggested given the findings from the experimental research. The research will be conducted under the direction of professors Gregory Deierlein of Stanford University and K. Kasai of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. It is anticipated that Maison’s work will have significant implications for the future research and development of collapse performance assessment.

Maison is a licensed structural engineer. For the past 3 years he has worked with EBMUD, where he is responsible for capital projects related to water systems lifeline earthquake engineering. His expertise is in the areas of design, analysis, risk studies, and software development. Maison holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, an M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, in structural engineering, and a B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois.

The Professional Fellowship is awarded annually and provides a stipend of $30,000 for tuition, fees, and living expenses for a 12-month period.

The objective of EERI is to reduce earthquake risk by advancing the science and practice of earthquake engineering, by improving understanding of the impact of earthquakes on the physical, social, economic, political and cultural environment, and by advocating comprehensive and realistic measures for reducing the harmful effects of earthquakes.

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
499 14th Street, Suite 320
Oakland, California 94612-1934
tel: (510) 451-0905 • fax: (510) 451-5411