Is Resilient Engineering Sustainable?

Sarah attempts to answer this question for seismic design of buildings in a new paper accepted by the Journal of Structural Engineering. 

A teaser for the results in the paper. Check out the full manuscript! 

Casie is working in Ecuador this summer

PhD student Casie Venable is working in Ecuador, examining housing reconstruction after the 2016 earthquake.  Check out the blog on her page as she updates us on her adventures. 

Orlando, Cody and Travis haVE new positionS

Orlando Arroyo has joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor at Universidad de la Sabana, near Bogota Colombia. 

Cody Harrington is working in the Truckee office of Gabbart and Woods. 

Travis Marcilla is designing modern homes at phStructure. 

Congratulations guys! We'll miss you!

Three papers recently accepted

Congratulations to Orlando Arroyo, whose paper ­­"Evaluating the Performance of Topologically Optimal RC Moment Frame Buildings using a PBEE Framework" has been accepted by the Journal of Earthquake Engineering. The paper will be available here shortly. 

Congratulations are also in order to Juan Olarte and Balaji Paramasivam, whose paper ­­"Centrifuge modeling of Mitigation-soil-foundation-structure interaction on liquefiable ground" has been accepted by the Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering. This paper will also be available here shortly. 

Finally, Erin Arneson and Derya Deniz's paper "Information Deficits and Post-Disaster Recovery" will shortly be published by ASCE's Natural Hards Review.  Good work Erin and Derya! 

Cody and Sarah's Ph.D Graduation

With some other members of our research group: Jenny Ramirez and Juan Olarte 

Congratulations to Dr. Cody and Dr. Orlando!

Cody Harrington successfully defended his thesis ADVANCEMENT OF PERFORMANCE-BASED EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING FOR RC FRAME BUILDINGS: APPLICATION TO RETROFIT DESIGN AND CONSIDERATION OF VERTICAL GROUND MOTIONS on Nov. 15. 

Congratulations, Cody! 

Orlando Arroyo defended his thesis at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile  on "OPTIMIZACIÓN DEL DISEÑO DE UN EDIFICIO DE PÓRTICOS DE HORMIGÓN ARMADO PARA MINIMIZAR EL DRIFT" 

Congratulations, Orlando! 

Calibration of Model to Simulate Response of Reinforced Concrete Beam-Columns to Collapse

Our paper on this topic is forthcoming in the ACI Structural Journal, co-authored with Curt Haselton, Greg Deierlein and Sarah Taylor-Lange. This paper represents an update version of the  relationships in a 2007 PEER Report. 

Sarah's Presentation at IALCCE

PhD students Sarah Welsh-Huggins is presenting her work at the 5th International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering -  IALCCE 2016 - in Delft, the Netherlands this week. Her paper is entitled "Is a Stronger Building also Greener? Influence of Seismic Design Decisions on Building Life-Cycle Economic and Environmental Impacts".  

Paper on Flood Loss Models for Boulder Published

A paper coauthored with Derya Deniz (former postdoc), Erin Arneson, Shideh Dashti and Amy Javernick-Will will appear in Natural Hazards and has been published online.  We explored the losses experienced in the City of Boulder in the 2013 Floods. 

Reliability-Targeted Snow Loads for Roof Design

Two papers about reliability-targeted snow loads for roof design are forthcoming in the Journal of Structural Engineering. These cover approaches to determining ground snow loads where historical record is limited and topography is complex, and methods to ensure that roof reliability is consistent across different geographical contexts.  

(A complete version of both papers with figures embedded will be available shortly). 

Ratio of the computed reliability-targeted ground snow load to the 50-year ground snow load at 327 sites in Colorado.

Sarah to share her experiences in DC last spring

Sarah Welsh-Huggins will be participating in a panel discussion on Wednesday, Sept. 28, hosted by CIRES’ Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR), exploring the Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering (CASE) workshop.

The workshop, held over three days in the spring in Washington, D.C., connects young scientists with policy-makers for exposure to science advocacy as an integral component of influencing policy. Sarah attended last spring, as the winner of a campus competition for travel support. 

Check out the full story here. 

Abbie gave a plenary presentation at the QuakeCore Annual Meeting in Taupo, New Zealand

Abbie spoke on " Waiting for the big one: Simulations of infrastructure performance to inform seismic risk decision-making before the next earthquake".  Chris McGann of the University of Canterbury was the other speaker in this session. 

Moderator: Ricardo Taborda, Speaker: Chris McGann, Abbie Liel, Moderator and QuakeCore Deputy Director: Brendon Bradley

Integrating Hazard Resistance and Sustainability

Check out Sarah's paper published this summer: 

Building design and performance are increasingly being scrutinised from perspectives of both sustainability and hazard resistance. However, the approaches taken to consider these perspectives are disconnected; green building rating systems do not consider hazard resistance in their assessments, while performance-based engineering methods have tended to neglect consideration of environmental impacts. This study presents a framework to assess a building’s life-cycle performance in terms of social, environmental and economic impacts using probabilistic approaches, considering the possible occurrence of an earthquake or other extreme event. The framework is illustrated through a case study of an office building in Los Angeles, designed with and without different types of vegetated (green) roofs, and at risk from varying earthquake hazard scenarios. The case study results demonstrate trade-offs between upfront building costs, material choices, hazard resistance and environmental impact.