As the co-chairs of EERI’s Learning From Earthquakes (LFE) program, we wanted to take this opportunity to share some updates on the work we have underway and planned for the future.
LFE’s response to the February 2023 M7.8 and M7.5 Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence is continuing more than a year and a half later—both via sharing new and updated research findings, and through ongoing study of the impacts, including a follow-up reconnaissance trip in partnership with the Social Science Extreme Events Research Network (SSEER) this October. View the Earthquake Spectra special collection here and the proceedings from the special program track at the 2024 annual meeting here for some of that work. In collaboration with colleagues from Çankaya University, LFE’s Business Resilience Subcommittee has been conducting an in-depth case study of impacts to the small business sector in Gaziantep, with a focus on gender. That research, along with important work on housing recovery in southern Turkey, will be featured in an upcoming LFE webinar.
LFE is also continuing to learn from the M7.4 earthquake that struck Taiwan in April. This month we are hosting a two-part webinar series on the earthquake—in the first session, experts from the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering reported on the earthquake mechanism and impacts. In a second session next week, a colleague from Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction will join a member of the Housner Fellows team that traveled to Taiwan in May for reconnaissance to speak about the lessons of this earthquake for functional recovery. Register here to attend.
We also want to welcome some new leaders to LFE’s subcommittees, which do such important work to advance our multidisciplinary research agenda. In the Public Health Subcommittee, we welcome new co-chairs Janise Rodgers and Kim Shoaf, and thank outgoing co-chairs Courtney Welton-Mitchell and Luis Ceferino for their leadership and contributions, particularly in spearheading the development of the Post-Earthquake Social Determinants of Health Assessment data collection tool. On the Business Resilience subcommittee, Juan Fung has come on board as a new co-chair alongside Anne Wein, who will continue in that role. We thank outgoing co-chair Cynthia Kroll for her leadership and her contributions, including to the Turkey earthquake response.
LFE is also looking forward to some exciting developments in the near future. After a break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are excited to be relaunching the LFE Travel Study program, which provides such important opportunities for early career members to learn from earthquakes, in 2025. Stay tuned for an announcement about those plans later this fall! We are also updating the LFE website to improve your user experience and ensure that EERI is ready to respond rapidly and effectively when earthquakes occur and that our virtual clearinghouses can function as a robust repository for sharing reconnaissance data and other information with the community. We hope to launch the new website by this November.
Finally, thanks to the generous support of donors to the LFE Endowment, we are moving ahead with ambitious plans to expand the work of the program as that funding becomes sustainable. We are working to grow the existing subcommittees to provide more opportunities for EERI members to participate in LFE activities and further develop research agendas, tools, and techniques for earthquake reconnaissance. As part of that plan, we are also looking forward to launching new subcommittees in additional topic areas, such as lifelines, insurance, and informal construction. In 2025, a major LFE workshop will bring members and experts together to develop these plans further. To prepare, we are asking you to share your input. Please take a moment to fill out this brief survey to help us understand what topic areas are of greatest interest to you! Your feedback will help us chart the course for LFE’s next chapter.
Mike Mieler (M.EERI 2010)
Eduardo Miranda (M.EERi 1987)
