Tenth U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering

10th National Conference on Earthquake Engineering
Frontiers of Earthquake Engineering
July 21-25, 2014
Anchorage, Alaska

Purpose

The Tenth U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering, on the 50th Anniversary of theGreat Alaska Earthquake and Tsunami, will provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to share the latest knowledge and techniques to mitigate the damaging effects of earthquakes and tsunamis. This conference is being planned by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) in collaboration with the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). The conference will provide a unique environment to facilitate synergy between professionals and student researchers from the U.S. and around the world. This conference brings together professionals from a broad range of disciplines, including architecture, structural engineering, seismology, geology, geophysics, geotechnical engineering, business, public policy, social sciences, regional planning, emergency response planning, and regulation.

Call for Papers

Authors must submit abstracts and papers online. The deadline for submission of abstracts is March 31, 2013. The abstract collection system will open January 7, 2013. Additional detailed instructions are available at the conference website http://www.10ncee.org.

Special Sessions

The conference will include a small number of Special Sessions. Those interested in organizing and chairing a Special Session should contact either of the Technical Program committee co-chairs, Scott Ashford (Scott.Ashford@oregonstate.edu) or Greg Deierlein (ggd@stanford.edu), by February 15, 2013.

More Information

For more information view the 1st Announcement and Call for Papers at http://10ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/10NCEE_Call-for-Papers.pdf or visit the conference website at http://www.10ncee.org.

In memoriam of Prof. Ambraseys

Professor Nicolas Ambraseys Dip.Eng DIC PhD FICE FREng (Greek: Νικόλαος Αμβράζης, born 1929 in Athens) is a Greek Engineering Seismologist. He was Professor and later Professor Emeritus of Engineering Seismology and Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London. Professor Ambraseys studied Rural and Surveying Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (Diploma in 1952) and then Civil Engineering at Imperial College specialising in Soil Mechanics and Engineering Seismology. He worked with Professors Alec Skempton and Alan W. Bishop and obtained his PhD degree in 1958; his thesis title was "The seismic stability of earth dams". He joined the staff in 1958 as a Lecturer and he was appointed a Reader in Engineering Seismology in 1968 and full Professor of Engineering Seismology in 1974. In 1968 he established the Engineering Seismology Section (ESEE) (now part of the Geotechnics Section) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Imperial College and served as its first Head from 1971 to 1994, until he retired and was reappointed as Senior Research Investigator. He founded and became the first chairman of the British National Committee of Earthquake Engineering (more on wikipedia).
Professor Ambraseys passed away on the 28th of December, 2012.

I remember Prof. Ambraseys from my MSc studies at Imperial College London back in the mid 90's. No need to say much; anyone who has attended his lectures has an idea of the experience. His lectures were not based on writings on the board but on discussion. I particularly remember an example he gave one day on probability. He showed a slide on the overhead projector, with a train somewhere in Turkey, overturned by a surface fault which happened to be crossing the railway lines during an earthquake. I think it must had been near Erzincan. This time he used the blackboard. He calculated the probability of occurrence given the seismic hazard at the site, the probability of a surface faulting at the site of the incident, the probability of a train passing exactly the time of the faulting from this very site and the probability of the train being overturned. All and all, something of the order of 1e-10. Nearly impossible to happen. Nevertheless, the train had crashed and people had died. Still possible.

Therefore, he concluded, "you should see statistics in a relative and not in an absolute sense". Every time I crash on uncertainty issues and every time I compute statistical measures I remember this quote. Statistics mean nothing on their own, unless you critically compare them with a carefully selected measure.