As the outgoing co-chairs of EERI’s flagship Learning From Earthquakes (LFE) program, we are excited to welcome Ayse Hortacsu and Robb Moss, who will be taking over the helm in 2026. We also wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the major developments LFE has experienced during the past four years of our tenure—and thank all of the dedicated EERI members, volunteers, and donors who make this work possible.
The generosity of our donors and the successful LFE Endowment Campaign has made LFE stronger and more sustainable. Moving forward, support from the endowment will mean that LFE leadership and program committee have the resources needed to make rapid decisions about sending reconnaissance teams into the field when major earthquakes strike. It will also allow LFE to continue the longer-term work of developing reconnaissance research agendas through the ongoing work of the program, and we’re excited to see the program grow sustainably as a result.
At last week’s quarterly meeting of the full LFE Program Committee, it was a pleasure to hear reports from a growing number of Reconnaissance Advisory subcommittees, including the long-active Business Resilience and Public Health subcommittees, the newly established Lifelines subcommittee, and three more subcommittees (Tsunami, Housing, and Risk) that are currently in development with plans to launch in 2026. The Reconnaissance Advisory subcommittees build on the EERI Program Alignment Plan and the recommendations of the LFE Strategic Working Group and the Reconnaissance Coordination Workshop held at the 12th National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Salt Lake City in 2022. Along with other initiatives like VERT and the re-launched Travel Study Program, which recently held a successful 2025 trip to Mexico and is planning another to Taiwan in 2026, LFE will continue to expand opportunities for members at all career stages to participate in and contribute to LFE activities.
We also had the pleasure of celebrating LFE’s 50th anniversary during our time as co-chairs, including special programming at the 2023 Annual Meeting, which featured a plenary session on contributions to earthquake reconnaissance, personal testimonials from members of past LFE reconnaissance team, and a distinguished lecture highlighting LFE’s role in shaping the evolution of earthquake reconnaissance. We believe the developments summarized in the previous paragraph have put the program on a strong track for the next fifty years.
By far the most significant earthquake of our tenure LFE was the M7.8 and M7.5 Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence that struck Türkiye and Syria in February 2023. LFE sent 5 reconnaissance teams (two of them joint, with GEER and SSEER) to the field, and their findings have been shared in a major reconnaissance report published 3 months after the earthquake, a webinar series, special program tracks at the 2023 and 2024 Annual Meetings, and in the Earthquake Spectra 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Turkey, Earthquake Sequence Special Collection, which resulted in 33 peer-reviewed journal papers. These products represent a tremendous amount of hard work and expertise by many, many people working together, and we want to thank everyone involved—especially Ayse Hortacsu and Ayhan Irfanoglu, co-leads of the LFE response, as well as the many Turkish colleagues who gave their time and expertise to help the world learn from this devastating event. We also especially thank the 12 EERI members that served as guest editors for the Earthquake Spectra Special collection. During this and other LFE earthquake responses we have also worked to deepen LFE’s collaboration with other organizations in the reconnaissance community, including GEER, StEER, and SSEER.
Finally, when we took over from Charlie Huyck, our predecessor as Chair and a source of much valuable advice and support, we became the first co-chairs of the LFE program. Sharing joint leadership, particularly as an academic and practitioner, had real benefit, both in adding perspective and in managing the workload. We’re very glad to see that approach continue with Ayse and Robb, and we look forward to remaining engaged in LFE under their leadership in the coming years.
Mike Mieler and Eduardo Miranda
Learning From Earthquakes Program Co-Chairs, 2021-2025
