RISK ASSESSMENT AND
RISK COMMUNICATION WORKSHOP
On March 26-27th, Stanford hosted 40 experts from ten countries for a Special Workshop on Risk Assessment and Risk Communication. Co-sponsored by the Blume Center, and organized by Assistant Professor Jack Baker, the workshop explored tools and approaches for assessing and managing risk in engineered systems such as buildings, dams, highway systems and offshore structures. Developments in performance-based engineering, structural reliability and decision theory have enabled researchers to better predict the reliability of engineered structures, and to make design decisions based on the risks associated with failures. Fully utilizing these abilities requires that criteria for risk acceptability be known or identifiable, and that affected parties be able to understand these risks. The purpose of the workshop was to gather leading researchers to discuss innovations and examples where risk-based analysis procedures have been used in practice, as well as to identify future research needs.
Over the course of two days, twenty presentations were given on topics relating to identifying and defining target levels of acceptable risk, risk-based calibration of building codes, resolving variations in societal acceptance of risks from varying sources, and communicating risk analysis results to stakeholders outside of the technical community. Blume Center PhD student Abbie Liel gave a talk entitled “Assessing the seismic collapse risk of reinforced concrete frame structures, including effects of modeling uncertainties,” coathored by Stanford faculty Greg Deierlein, Jack Baker, and Blume Center alumnus Curt Haselton. Blume Center PhD student Renee Lee gave a talk entitled “Efficient seismic risk assessment and retrofit prioritization model for transportation networks,” coathored by Professor Anne Kiremidjian. Blume Center alumni Paolo Bazzurro, August Boissinnade and Farzin Zareian were also registered participants. A special issue of the journal Structural Safety is in preparation, containing selected technical papers from the workshop.
HELMUT'S HEROES WIN CHAMPIONSHIP
The Blume Center sponsored Division II IM volleyball team (nicknamed Helmut's Heroes) brought home the Championship Title this year! Pictured are the awesome team of Chris Smith, Joe Schuster, Erik Borchers, Alan Asbeck, Nick Palumbo, Andy Myers, and Marc Ramirez (not pictured, Pablo Sanz).
SEAoNC STANFORD STUDENT NIGHT
On March 6, the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California welcomed over 40 Stanford students and faculty at their monthly dinner meeting in San Francisco. The meeting featured a presentation by engineers from SGH on their base isolation addition to the 185 Berry Street Building. Prior to dinner, the Palo Alto office of Hohbach-Lewin hosted an office tour to introduce students to the real-world practice of structural engineering.
PUBLISHED PAPERS
Rouse, JM, and Billington, SL, (2007) “Creep, Shrinkage, and Permeability of High-Performance Fiber-reinforced Cement-based Composites,” ACI Materials Journal, 104(2):129-136.
Sarabandi P., and Kiremidjian A., “Terrain Dependent Correspondence Search for 3D Urban Modeling Using Multiple High-Resolution Satellite Images,” URBAN2007, April 11~13 2007, Paris, France.
Cabrera C., Cheung A., Sarabandi P., Nair K. K., and Kiremidjian A., “Application of statistical pattern recognition methods for damage detection to field data,” SPIE 14th International Symposium, Nondestructive Evaluation for Health Monitoring and Diagnostics, 18~22 March, 2007, San Diego, CA.
2006-2007 GRADUATES
Congratulations to all of our 2006-2007 Graduates. Master of Science degrees in Structural Engineering and Geomechanics were awarded to JoAnna Billings, Eric Borchers (Rutherford & Chekene), Adam Chalmers (US Army-West Point), Kyle Chatman (Degenkolb), Ashpica Chhabra, Shannon Goff, Elizabeth Grote, Siswi Herlini, Lars Keim, Panagiotis Koklanos (Weidlinger Assoc.), Ka Chun Kwok, Christopher Larkin, Carrie Leung (DASSE), Lilian Leung, Tracy Leung, Tze Meng Edwin Lim, Matthew Mester, John Millea (TGRWA, LLC), Jennifer Moore, Yash Rajiv Ahuja, Laura Russon (URS), Ryan Sawaski, Joseph Schuster (SGH), Abraham Sipes (Nabih Youssef and Assoc.), Guillermo Soriano, Leonidas Stellakis, Evan Stoner (Walter P. Moore), WaiChing Sun, Jana Tetikova, Jeremy Tillman, Victor Victorsson, Katie Walker (LERA), Shenming Wang, Joshua White and Lai Hung Yip (KPFF).
Master of Science degrees in Design/Construction Integration were awarded to Yunmoon Chang, Yves Frinault, Joseph Jabra, Christopher Larkin, Samuel Newman, Kaustubh Pandya (WJE), Badawi Qawasmi, and Lorraine Young (DeSimone Consulting Group).
Doctorate degrees in Structural Engineering and Geomechanics were awarded to Kyle Douglas (CalStar Cement), Curtis Haselton (Cal State Chico), Renee Lee, Won Lee (CalStar Cement), Jiro Takagi (ARUP Japan), and Polsak Tothong (AIR). A doctorate degree in Design Construction Integration was awarded to Zhen Yin.
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BLUME CENTER NEWS
Professor Sarah Billington was on partial leave from Stanford in the Fall and Winter helping to found CalStar Cement, Inc., a local Start-up developing environmentally friendly cements for the construction industry. She also began serving the first year of a 3-year term as a member of the Board of Directors of NEES Inc.
On Sept. 28-29, Professors Helmut Krawinkler and Greg Deierlein attended the NEES E-Defense research coordination meetings in Japan and witnessed the collapse test of a full-scale reinforced concrete building on the E-Defense shake table.
Professor Sarah Billington attended 5th National Seismic Conference on Bridges and Highways, San Mateo, California, September 2006. Presented paper on “A Comparative Performance-Based Seismic Assessment of Traditional and Enhanced-Performance Bridge Piers Systems.”
On Oct. 12-13, Professors Anne Kiremidjian, Kincho Law, and Greg Deierlein participated in the 4th International Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Taipei. Law presented a paper on wireless sensors and control and Deierlein presented a paper on collapse assessment of reinforced concrete buildings.
Professor Greg Deierlein and PhD Candidate Abbie Liel participated with a presentation on performance-based earthquake engineering at the IRCC Workshop on the Use of Risk in Regulation, held in San Francisco on Oct. 27.
From Nov. 1-3, Professor Greg Deierlein attended AISC Specification Meetings in Chicago and presented recent research findings of a study with Jiro Takagi (PhD 2007) on assessing the strength and stability of steel structures under fire.
Professor Jack Baker gave an invited talk “Breaking the Uniform Hazard Spectra into Component Scenario Events: the Effect of Epsilon on Structural Response” at the 2006 COSMOS Annual Meeting Technical Session in Berkeley, CA on November 17th.
Professor Sarah Billington organized a technical session for the ACI Fall Convention in Denver, CO in November 2006 on “Precast Concrete for Bridges in Seismic Regions” and presented recent research on performance-based assessments of self-centering concrete bridge piers.
On Jan. 19-20, several Blume Center faculty and students participated in the PEER 2007 Annual Meeting. Professor Helmut Krawinkler made a presentation on "Development and Utilization of Databases on Component Experiments", Curt Haselton (PhD) presented work on "Unique Capabilities of OpenSees for Performance-Based Engineering," and Greg Deierlein made a presentation on "Assessing Effectiveness of Building Code Provisions."
In conjunction with their work on the PEER Tall Building initiative, Professors Helmut Krawinkler and Greg Deierlein led working groups at the ATC-PEER Tall Building practitioner workshop on January 30 and have made presentations at LA Tall Building Council Meetings in September and May.
PhD Candidate Pooya Sarabandi presented “Building Inventory Extraction Method Using Remote Sensing for Urban Risk Management,” at the SPIE 11th Annual Symposium, Nondestructive Evaluation for Health Monitoring and Diagnostics, 26 Feb~2 March, 2006, San Diego, CA.
Professor Ronnie Borja gave a keynote at the Second International Conference on the Mechanics of Unsaturated Soils held in Weimar, Germany on March 7-9, 2007, where he talked about localized and diffuse instabilities in partially saturated soils.
On March 19, Professors Helmut Krawinkler and Greg Deierlein, and PhD candidate Abbie Liel attended and presented material on assessment of earthquake-induced building collapse to the ATC-63 Project Review Panel on the "Quantification of Building System Performance and Response Parameters".
Professor Jack Baker hosted the annual meeting of the Joint Committee on Structural Safety at Stanford University on March 28th.
Professor Jack Baker gave a presentation “Automated identification of velocity pulses in near-fault ground motions,” at the Seismological Society of America annual meeting in Kona, Hawaii on April 11-13.
BLUME CENTER ALUMNI GATHERING
The Blume Center Alumni have been holding receptions in the area for alumni to meet, network and enjoy each other's company. The last gathering was at Exponent in Menlo Park on March 30. We encourage all local alumni to join us at the next reception which will be held in September at RMS in Fremont. If you would like to be included in the mailing list, please let Racquel know.
RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT
Evangelos Stergiou and Anne S. Kiremidjian |
