QUAKE '06
CENTENNIAL LECTURE SERIES

Part I of the Quake '06 Centennial Lecture Series, co-sponsored by Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley, was a great success with lectures on the history of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Professor Kevin Starr's lecture on The Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 -- Lessons Learned, gave a timeline and history of the events and touched on the failures of the government and the military to appropriately deal with the disaster, drawing parallels to the recent problems with Hurricane Katrina. Malcolm Barker (shown in photo) spoke of the human side of the tragedy. His lecture, Through the Eyes of the Survivors, gave a glimpse into what it was like to have survived the earthquake, and the aftermath. Professor Stephen Tobriner (UC-Berkeley) gave a spirited lecture on the buildings of the period and how engineers and architects learned from the previous earthquakes and attempted, quite successfully, to build "earthquake resistant" buildings.

Part II of the series, which will focus on Earth Science, Earthquake Engineering, Preparedness and Disaster Response, begins on January 17 with Chris Poland, who will speak on Restrain, Respect and Rehabilitate: A Tale of Three Seismic Projects at Stanford. Mary Lou Zoback of the USGS will speak on The 1906 Earthquake: Lessons Learned, Lessons Forgotten, and Future Directions on January 31. On February 16, Eric Elsesser will discuss Improving Seismic Safety and Performance through Innovative Structural Engineering. And finally, Kathleen Tierney will talk about Social Dimensions of Catastrophic Disasters: From the 1906 Earthquake to Hurricane Katrina.

For more information on the lectures and other events please see the Quake '06 website at http://quake06.stanford.edu.

PUBLISHED PAPERS

Sarabandi P., Adams B., Kiremidjian A. and Eguchi R., “Infrastructure Inventory Compilation Using Single High Resolution Satellite Images,” 3rd International Workshop on Remote Sensing Technologies and Disaster Response, September 12-13, 2005, Chiba University, Japan

Baker J.W., Cornell C.A., "A Vector-Valued Ground Motion Intensity Measure Consisting of Spectral Acceleration and Epsilon". Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics 2005; 34:1193-1217

APPRECIATION TO AFFILIATES,
FRIENDS AND DONORS

As we reflect on the past year, the faculty of the John. A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Mrs. Jene Blume, the John A. Blume Foundation, our professional affiliates, and other donors. Their encouragement, participation and financial support are critical for promoting an exciting research and educational program that promotes the engineering of safer and more sustainable buildings and civil infrastructure.

GRAD STUDENT AIDS TSUNAMI VICTIMS

This past summer, grad student Molly Morse, project coordinator with Engineers for a Sustainable World ­Stanford (ESW), led a team of students to the Andaman & Nicobar Islands (India) to help with rebuilding following the devastating damage from the December 26 earthquake and tsunami. Working with an Indian based NGO, Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS), based out of Delhi, Molly worked on a report for the Social Welfare Advisory Board (SWAB) about the extent of damage on Mahila Mandals (women’s centers) on South Andaman Island. During her six weeks in India, Molly helped with a master drainage design for Nanjapanagar, the temporary shelter site in Hutbay on Little Andaman Island, and aided in the design for a community center, at the same site. Her fellow students in ESW stayed in the Andamans through November.

RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

CAPTURING STRAIN LOCALIZATION IN DENSE SANDS WITH RANDOM DENSITY

Jose Andrade and Ronaldo I. Borja

BLUME CENTER NEWS

Professors Anne Kiremidjian, Jack Baker, and Allin Cornell attended and presented papers at the International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability in Rome, Italy held June 19-23, 2005.

Professor Greg Deierlein presented a paper entitled, “Developing Consensus on Provisions to Evaluate Collapse of Reinforced Concrete Buildings” (co-authored with PhD Candidate Curt Haselton) at a US-Japan Workshop held in Berkeley on July 7-8, 2005.

Professor Ronnie Borja delivered plenary lectures at the International Workshop on Modern Trends in Geomechanics on June 27-29 in Vienna; the 8th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics on July 24-28 in Austin, Texas, and the 8th Computational Plasticity Conference (COMPLAS 8) on September 5-8 held in Barcelona, Spain. In addition, he co-authored several papers presented by doctoral students Craig Foster, Jose Andrade, and Pablo Sanz at the Third MIT Conference on Computational Fluid and Solid Mechanics on June 14-17 in Boston, and at the 8th USNCCM in Austin.

Professor Greg Deierlein presented a one-day workshop on the new Direct Analysis and Stability Design Provisions for Steel Buildings at the annual meeting of the Metal Buildings Manufacturer’s Association in Cleveland on July 20, 2005.

Professor Sarah Billington attended and presented an invited paper at the 3rd International Conference on Construction Materials: Performance, Innovations and Structural Implications (ConMat05) held in Vancouver, BC, from August 22-24, 2005.
During her visit to Finland in September Dr. Renate Fruchter was keynote speaker at EVTEK’s 20th anniversary symposium in Espoo, guest speaker at Nokia Research Center “Insight and Foresight” event, guest speaker at Helsinki University of Technology, and guest of honor of the Mayor of Espoo where she gave a series of presentations on high-performance global teamwork.

Professor Sarah Billington conducted two hands-on sessions for the Stanford Summer Engineering Academy introducing incoming freshman to civil engineering. Students participated in a design competition to build and test the most efficient (height*strength/weight) paper column. The winning column was 6” tall, weighed 0.6 oz. and carried 146 lbs.

Professors Helmut Krawinkler and Greg Deierlein participated in the NEES E-Defense Workshop on Steel Structures at the E-Defense Shake Table Facility in Miki, Japan on Aug. 2-3. Krawinkler and Deierlein reported on three NEES projects dealing with (a) evaluation of sidesway building collapse, (b) simulation of earthquake-induced fractures in braced frames, and (c) a new project looking at innovative rocking systems with energy dissipating replaceable fuses.

On August 5, the Blume Center hosted a poster reception and dinner for the Board of Directors of the Applied Technology Council, who held their quarterly meeting in Palo Alto. The reception provided a great networking opportunity for students to share information on their research with leading professionals involved in risk mitigation for earthquakes and other hazards.

Marc Ramirez (PhD Candidate), Professor Greg Deierlein, and a team of undergraduate researchers (Carlos Ortiz and Jonathan Huang) collaborated with engineers from Skidmore Owings and Merrill (Blume Center Affiliate) on the testing and analysis of a new type of pinned-fuse beam column connection. Ortiz and Huang presented the research findings at an Undergraduate Research Forum held in the Stanford Alumni Center on October 20, 2005.

PhD Candidates Jose Andrade and Jack Baker organized a series of seminars by the Blume Center graduate students this summer. The series was intended to share information and engage in discussions among the Blume Center students and faculty. The speakers included Jiro Takagi, Dimitrios Lignos, Pablo Sanz, Krishnan Nair, Curt Haselton, Farzin Zareian, Kyle Douglas and Yang Wang.

SUMMER 2005 GRADUATES

Congratulations to our students who received their degrees during the Summer Quarter. Master of Science degrees were awarded to Ryan Lawrence, Jury Shin, Subashri Swaminathan and Marc Ramirez (continuing in the PhD program); an Engineer degree was awarded to Satoshi Matsuki. Doctorate degrees were awarded to Paul Cordova (post-doc at Stanford), Qiang Fu and Jack Baker (Asst. Professor at Stanford) in the Structural Engineering & Geomechanics Program and Peng Li in the Design/Construction Integration Program.