Casie travels to the Philippines, and the Global Shelter Cluster Meeting (Geneva)

In the Philippines, PhD student Casie Venable continued her field work visiting nearly a dozen communities affected by Typhoon Haiyan. Casie blogs about her work here: https://casievenable.com/blog/

In Tacloban

In Tacloban

She presented her work at the Global Shelter Cluster in Geneva, focusing on understanding conflicts between local understanding of safe shelter, and engineering assessments.

Casie, presenting at the Global Shelter Cluster meeting

Casie, presenting at the Global Shelter Cluster meeting

Dustin and mohammad presented their research at the 2019 structures congress in orlando, FL!

Dustin presented on his research comparing loss estimation using FEMA P-58 to other methods such as HAZUS at the 2019 Structures Congress in Orlando, FL.

Mohammad presented his talk entitled, “Experimental Investigation of Large-Scale Hybrid Sliding-Rocking Bridge Columns.” He also presented a talk for Jakub Valigura entitled, “Use of Large-Scale Experiments and Expert Solicitation to Define Damage States and Repair Strategies for Hybrid Sliding-Rocking Columns”.

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Abbie now Fellow of ASCE

In March 2019, Abbie was elected Fellow of ASCE. She was also recently selected as a fellow for the ASCE Structural Engineering Institute.

In the words of ASCE, “ASCE Fellows have made celebrated contributions and developed creative solutions that change lives around the world. It is a prestigious honor held by 3% of ASCE members.”

Impacts of spatial variations in permeability of liquefiable deposits on seismic performance

Sand deposits are often stratified with thin layers of low-permeability silt. In this study, which will be published by the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, Dr. Balaji Paramasivam and his coauthors present the results of dynamic centrifuge tests that evaluate the response of 3- and 9-story inelastic steel structures (A and B) founded on layered liquefiable deposits with and without a silt cap. The thin silt layer is also evaluated in terms of its influence on the effectiveness of prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs) as mitigation. The results indicate that a thin silt cap may have beneficial or detrimental effects on a structure’s performance, particularly when evaluated in terms of foundation’s permanent rotation (or tilt). . These results point to the importance of identifying and characterizing thin interlayers in the soil profile, together with the key properties of structure, foundation, and ground motion, when assessing and mitigating the consequences of liquefaction.

A link to the manuscript pre-publication: here.

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New paper on intensity measures for liquefaction consequences

Zach Bullock, a Ph.D. student, co-advised by Professors Abbie Liel, Shideh Dashti and Keith Porter, has recently published an article about selection of appropriate intensity measures for liquefaction consequences such as foundation settlement and tilt. Among other findings, the paper argues that intensity measures at outcropping rock are actually more effective than those at the surface.

The manuscript is provided here ahead of publication.


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Casie Venable awarded fellowship in humanitarian shelter and settlements

Ph.D. student Casie Venable was awarded a 2019 USAID OFDA HFHI Shelter and Settlements Fellowships. She proposes to study friction between local understandings of safe shelter and expert assessments of safe shelter in the Philippines.

The Fellowship will provided funding for Casie to travel to Shelter and Settlements conferences to disseminate her findings and work with organizations in the sector to ensure these findings have a positive impact. Casie is collaboratively co-advised by Abbie Liel and Amy Javernick-Will.

Congratulations, Casie!

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Zach Bullock presents at 2019 GeoCongress!

Zach Bullock presents at 2019 GeoCongress. His talk was titled, “Generating Synthetic Borehole Data for Application in Site-Specific and Regional Evaluation of Liquefaction Consequences.” Go Zach!

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Congratulations! New NSF Grant award “Building Capacity for Safer Post-disaster Shelter: Leveraging Local Understanding and Advanced Engineering Assessments”!

Prof. Liel, along with PI Amy Javernick-Will (Construction Engineering & Management) and Co-PI Matt Koschmann (Communication), received a grant the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment (HDBE) program to study post-disaster shelter reconstruction programs in the Philippines and Puerto Rico. This 3-year, $500,000 project will assess the safety of post-disaster shelter in future earthquake and strong wind events, investigate household understanding of shelter safety, identify conflicts between engineering assessments and household understanding, and recommend communication strategies for improving post-disaster training programs. We expect this research to improve the resilience of communities affected by disasters. PhD students Casie Venable and Briar Goldwyn will be working on this project in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, respectively.

Congratulations Prof. Liel and the entire research team!

Link to the award:  https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1901808&HistoricalAwards=false

 

New paper related to induced seismicity by Magali Barba-Sevilla, Bridger Baird, Abbie Liel and Kristy Tiampo published in Remote Sensing!

Hazard Implications of the 2016 Mw 5.0 Cushing, OK Earthquake from a Joint Analysis of Damage and InSAR Data by Magali Barba-Servilla, Bridger W. Baird, Abbie Liel and Kristy Tiampo

Find the access to the full text through remote sensing here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/Infrastructure_Monitoring

Although it is well-established that large-scale wastewater disposal in the Arbuckle formation is linked to the recent rise in seismicity in Oklahoma, few studies in Oklahoma have shown surface deformation resulting from induced seismicity or from wastewater injection or both. In our two-part study, we observe both the surface deformation leading up to the November 2016 Mw 5.0 earthquake and its coseismic signal using a satellite radar technique known as Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR). In the first half, we perform a spatiotemporal correlation analysis of DInSAR derived surface deformation, wastewater injection, and seismicity in Cushing, OK. In the second half of the analysis, we invert for the source of the November 2016 event using DInSAR coseismic images, we classify photos of structural damage for the event, and compare their spatial signature.

New Fellowship Opportunity for PhD students at CU Boulder in Civil Engineering

Ten faculty from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at CU Boulder have been awarded a GAANN award to fund eight new PhD students. The project aims to increase the number of graduate students and, eventually, researchers and teachers, who have the multidisciplinary skills to address (i) the country’s deteriorating infrastructure and (ii) the need for upgraded and new transport, water/sanitation, building, and power infrastructure. Applications are now open for students to join our exciting cohort: https://www.colorado.edu/gaann-infrastructure/. We are looking for students with interest in a variety of infrastructure systems and their interdependencies. Other requirements are listed on the linked site.