DesignSafe Radio

This week on the show, we talk about a fascinating subject area: using drones to quickly assess a hazard area after an event and create an extremely detailed and accurate 3D model for researchers to study the effects of earthquakes, hurricanes, or other hazards on a community while the data is still fresh and the site is relatively undisturbed. This work is extremely important because getting scientific data quickly while a community is in the first few days after an event is critical to the understanding of how the hazard affected the area. The people in these communities just want to remove debris, start repairs, and get back to normal quickly so this data is extremely perishable and needs to be gathered rapidly. My guest today is Dr. Kevin Franke from BYU and we'll talk about his work scanning hazard areas from the air.

Find out more about his important work here: 

https://ceen.et.byu.edu/content/kevin-w-franke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tecc_N9hDk

This week, host Dan Zehner talks with Ben Mason, a natural hazards researcher at Oregon State University. Mason talks about his special interests: geotechnical earthquake engineering and soil-fluid-structure interactions.

Mason says that since childhood, he was interested in how things work. But it wasn’t until his undergraduate days at Georgia Tech that he discovered his deep interest in geotechnical engineering. Professor Larry Jacobs took Mason under his wing and encouraged him to go to graduate school. Mason says he envisioned traveling to earthquake zones and helping communities at risk from earthquakes and tsunamis.

As a grad student at UC Berkeley, Mason says, he spent a good deal of time working on experiments using the centrifuge at UC Davis, the Center for Geotechnical Modeling. He was examining “soil systems,” that, during an earthquake, affect the ground performance and naturally, the structures sitting on that ground.

But how exactly does the soil affect how buildings shake? And how can the performance of a soil system be improved? Mason’s interest in soil structure interaction extended to the buildings in dense urban areas — given that in an earthquake, buildings interact with each other through the soil. He says you can see evidence of this in post-earthquake zones like Katmandu, where one poorly performing building can damage many other, stronger buildings nearby. Mason describes how he used the centrifuge to model the problem.

Now at Oregon State, near the Cascadia Subduction Zone prone to earthquakes and possibly tsunamis, Mason studies soil structure interaction – and the variable of water.

It is a complex problem, with many compounding factors, he says. You can get photos after a tsunami or earthquake, and you can get images of a building before the event. Still, he says, you can only speculate some of the causes of damage. But, he says, thanks to smartphone video recordings of tsunamis, breakthroughs are being made. Mason mentions that fellow OSU researcher Hermann Fritz pieced together flow velocities of a tsunami based on amateur video footage.

Mason discusses his current research, also taking place at the UC Davis NHERI facility, which involves modeling a tsunami in a centrifuge. The team designed a tsunami-maker for the centrifuge and rigged up a high-speed camera to track water surface and velocity during testing. The idea is to discover what happened to soil during an earthquake —and a following tsunami – and to see what it may portend for the coastal communities like those along Pacific Northwest.

Mason says he has excellent working relationships with the team at the Davis-NHERI facility, and he is pleased to be using the DesignSafe cyberinfrastructure. He says the platform is flexible and supports unique data inputs – which is important for researchers providing novel findings. And he and his graduate students like using the DesignSafe software framework.

For more information on Ben Mason and his research, read up on his faculty page at Oregon State University.

Jason Beunker: Profile of a rising research engineer

On this week’s episode, Dan Zehner speaks with research engineer Jason Beunker.  Currently in year two of his PhD, Jason Beunker studies soil structure interaction and seismicity at UCLA’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Why academia? Like many PhD candidates in the field, Beunker returned to academia after working as a professional engineer. He discusses enjoying work for Seattle-based firm Shannon and Wilson and how his projects there actually inspired him to come back to school. He explains the value of applied engineering, logging hours in the field and interacting with knowledgeable clients. Field work gives your analyses more “teeth,” he says. And seeing his designs in action was a rewarding experience.

Early on, as a civil engineering undergraduate at the University of Illinois, it was just that hands-on nature of geotechnical engineering that appealed to him, he says. It was the right mix of math and science and being outside, getting his hands dirty.

He explains how, after eight years as a practicing engineer, he was encountering larger projects — with more complex problems and greater technical demands. He decided that, while he was still young, to enroll in a PhD program to build his knowledge in soil structure integration and soil response.

Research in soft soils. Beunker describes working with UCLA researcher Scott Brandenberg on a project examining shallow foundations on soft soil. (Brandenberg was a recent guest on DesignSafe Radio.) By replicating the response of ground failure and structure failure in these conditions, the work will function as a case history, a guide for future engineers looking at structural responses to earthquake shaking.

Beunker details his “steep learning curve,” as a hands-on researcher. Brandenberg, a noted expert in soil structures, performs his experiments on the large centrifuges at the UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling, a NHERI facility. New to centrifuge modelling, Beunker describes having to learn the nuts and bolts of centrifuge modelling with help from the support team at UC Davis. “I learned how to model there,” he says, thanks to the deep knowledge on the UC Davis team.

Host Dan Zehner was eager to learn about Beunker’s experience as a new NHERI researcher. As NHERI’s facility scheduling and operations coordinator, Zehner talked about providing new ways to “flatten the learning curve” for hazards engineers working at experimental faciities.

Data publishing. Beunker says that all the findings from the project will be posted to DesignSafe in a single Jupyter notebook. Currently he’s working to make the raw data from the experiments usable for colleagues, “dressed up and filtered,” as he puts it. He explains how Jupyter enables embedding direct connections to data in reports, so users can filter and examine the information in various ways.

We can look forward to hearing more Jason Beunker’s adventures in geotechnical engineering in the coming years.

David Prevatt, Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, University of Florida

Raised and schooled in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, from an early age David Prevatt was interested in science and structures. As an islander, he also grew up sailing and windsurfing. He recollects the exhilarating feeling of using wind power to skim the waves. He earned his bachelor’s in civil engineering from the University of the West Indies. After a stint as a civil engineer in Trinidad and Tobago, his curiosity and interest in research took him to Clemson University where he earned his master’s and PhD degrees in civil engineering.

Prevatt describes wind as a natural force, not a “disaster” in and of itself Disaster happens, he says, when we make buildings that are inadequately prepared to resist the wind. That is why he is grateful for the NHERI network. He sees tremendous value in having all types of natural hazards engineers  working towards resilient communities.

The community is a force of its own, Prevatt explains. Communities in hazard-prone areas need to start making hard decisions. Should they build stronger? Or should they perhaps build in areas that are not prone to hazards like strong winds? Communities need to assess their risk tolerance.

He discusses his research on extreme wind hazards, hurricanes, in the Caribbean. Our human nature, he says, makes it difficult for us to be rational. We tend not to remember bad events in the past, or at least think the unfortunate event won’t happen in the near-term future.

In fact, Prevatt’s first research paper, written in the early 1990s, concluded that if Caribbean nations did not take steps to address their vulnerability to hurricane risk, hurricane disasters would happen again. Hurricane David destroyed Dominique. Monserrat was devastated by Hugo. Now, 25 years later, many billions have been spent on construction that did not take hurricanes under consideration, he says, so it is not surprising what has happened to these countries in recent storms, he says.

Prevatt discusses human biases that lead poor community decisions. As an engineer, he says accurate data on hazard risks is the best tool for convincing communities to manage their risks. But even with data provided by groups like FEMA -- $1 spent on hazard reduction provides six times the future benefit – he acknowledges that communities continue to spend on immediate things, not on long term preventive measures.

He explains how the market help could convince consumers that they should purchase a house that’s build stronger than the local code, one that will last longer and have an increased level of safety. It is a hard argument for countries in the developing world, he says. He wants people rebuilding in the Caribbean to ask questions from engineers and other experts – and get straight answers -- before they rebuild in the same unsafe ways.

In his reconnaissance trip to of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Prevatt describes seeing new construction going up that did not take future storm damage into account. There were engineering and economic questions that were not considered. He cites an example: new phone poles went in right were the old ones had been. Which means the new poles are just as likely to fail. Post disaster is the time to consider improvements, he says, such as redundancies and backups.

He proposes that island standards perhaps should be different than mainland standards – so they can be more self-sufficient after a disaster. Prevatt cites grim statistics: In Puerto Rico, 93% of the country’s GDP will be going to rebuilding efforts.

He discusses traditional building techniques in the Carribean. Roof-to-wall connections often fail, often due to large eaves, structural elements that provide shade. He discusses ways that the Carribean communities could become more resilient. A wind-resilient neighborhood is safer, and there is a market for that, he argues.

Such communities need to hold their leaders’ feet to the fire to make hard, long-term decisions.

Although Prevatt is generally optimistic, he quotes an ASCE engineer who studied tornado wind loads and proposed building tornado-resistant houses – in 1897.

As a researcher, he poses important philosophical questions about our seemingly irrational inability to apply important lessons that research offers. Nevertheless, Prevatt loves his work as a wind engineer.  Given even a small chance that he might succeed in changing the state of affairs, he continues to research and provide data-driven advice. Indeed, he could help a lot. Plus, he says, he has fun.

As well as doing research, he teaches at the University of Florida. He loves guiding really smart students – who are the future of hazards engineering.

One of Prevatt’s most memorable natural disaster experiences was after tropical storm Fran, which caused considerable damage in Trinidad. On a reconnaissance mission, he visited a two-story house had that lost its roof. He remembers that the home owner was jovial at first, making jokes despite her problems. When he investigated, he discovered that although the roof had been designed to be bolted to the walls, the nuts and bolts were not there! The roof had never been properly attached. The discovery shocked and upset the owner – to learn that her damage was preventable. The incident has stuck with him. Prevatt says that he never forgets that the human cost of natural hazards goes beyond physical damage.

Nenad Gucunski, professor and chairman, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rutgers University

Professor Nedad Gucunski from Rutgers U performs novel bridge testing experiments using the large mobile shaker equipment from NHERI’s University of Austin Experimental Facility.

Like so many engineers, Gucunski’s interest in engineering took root in childhood. He liked to build with Legos and models. He was fascinated by buildings and enjoyed looking up famous structures in encyclopedias: the Roman Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, the Golden Gate Bridge. He read up on architects from 40’s and 50’s, including Frank Lloyd Wright. Although he excelled at math and science, drawing was not a strong suit. So, he decided to become a civil engineer.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering in his home country of Croatia. He practiced for a year, then realized he wanted to learn more. So he set his sights on academia.

Gucunski’s career in the United States came about by luck, he says. First, he applied for a Fulbright Scholarship in the U.S., and to his surprise he was accepted. He earned his master’s degree at the University of Michigan. He returned home to Croatia, but in a second piece of luck (as he describes it) one of his U of M professors enlisted his help on a research project — which enabled him to return to the U.S. and earn his PhD. He is still grateful to be honored by Professor Woods at U of M.

Now on faculty at Rutgers University, Gucunski’s research interests are diverse. Currently, his primary interest lies in the assessment of transportation infrastructure. He examines soil structures, seismic characteristics of soil, and he conducts numerical simulations.

Intrigued by geotechnical engineering research at the University of Texas, Austin, he is seeking to improve current methods of characterizing soil. The SSW method has evolved into other methods, he says. The MSW method is most popular today.

With the 64,000 pound “T Rex” mobile shaker, about the size of a bus, researchers pound the soil and generate surface waves; sensors in the ground capture the resulting waves; researchers then analyze the velocity of the waves to infer soil profiles, Gucunski explains.

Early on in this work, he demonstrated how we can, by looking at different modes of wave propagation, describe soil systems. Detailing his experiments, he hopes to use his resulting data to describe soil more accurately and conduct new types of tests by ground shaking. He explains how his experimental methods can be broadly applied to both geotechical research and transportation testing.

He jokes that as a student, he wanted to evaluate soil systems as deeply as possible. Now he wants to evaluate systems as shallowly as possible. Shallow characterizations can evaluate pavement and concrete systems, as well as bridges, which he says has sparked the interest of transportation officials in several cities in New Jersey, his home state.   

Given the state of infrastructure in the United States, Gucunski’s work could be a great help. Millions of miles of roadways and hundreds of thousands of bridges are in poor condition, he reminds us. Bridges earned a C+ on the engineering report card; roads earned a D. He emphasized the need for accurate data about infrastructure conditions – to make efficient upgrades. Similarly, he says, it is important to evaluate structures using technologies that do not do destructive sampling, that do not introduce damage.

Gucunski discusses advances in the task, such as imaging with laser profiling and ground radar, but he says we now need to improve data collection speed and data accuracy — and accurate data analysis.

He lists numerous examples illustrating why bridge structure evaluations, depending on construction type, present particular problems. Ultimately, he says, we want to extend the life of a bridge at minimal cost.

One of Gucunski’s most recent projects is the NSF Eager project, Informing Infrastructure Decisions through Large-Amplitude Forced Vibration Testing. Using the large mobile shaker fleet based at UT Austin NHERI facility, he wants to assess structure soundness.

He’s convinced that we can get key information for making infrastructure decisions by using large amplitude force vibration. The five large shakers from the UT NHERI facility are used primarily for geotechnical applications. Researchers use them to do modulus profiling and to characterize structures like embankments, levees and dams.  

By using the shakers to assess structures, Gucunski says, we can understand and predict how they will perform under extreme events, like earthquake loading. He hopes to establish the viability of these machines for use in evaluating structures and their performance under hazard loads.

He describes his processes of evaluating existing structures with the T Rex shaker, as well as his parametric studies to validate the work, and his findings. He is thankful to the New Jersey Department of Transportation, which was brave enough to give him access to a bridge to shake. He shook the ground in multiple directions and at multiple load levels to see how the bridge would respond.

He used T Rex was in a range of frequency sweeps, from 80 Hz down to 1 Hz. He and his team captured the response of the bridge and surrounding ground using geophones and accelerometers to determine the interaction between the soil and the structure sitting on it.

By comparing his parametric studies with the data gathered in the field with the T Rex shaker, his goal is an efficient way to assess structures like bridges. Looking to the future, Gucunski hopes to provide practical data and methodologies to researchers and infrastructure managers.

Jim Kaihatu

Associate Professor, Assistant Department head for Research

Texas A&M University

DesignSafe episode 35

Son of immigrants from the Netherlands, (via Indonesia), Jim attended a technical vocational high school in Southern California. He was good at math and science and majored in design and drafting, thinking he’d be an architect. But his talents lay on the engineering side of buildings, so he majored in structural engineering at Cal Poly Pomona. Already intrigued by fluid mechanics, he then took a class in coastal and ocean engineering – which changed his career path to coastal engineering. The field was new, less explored, less codified, he says. He went on to earn his master’s degree at UC Berkeley, the birthplace of coastal engineering. He then got a job with the Army Corps of Engineers, but soon realized that if he wanted to do extensive research he needed a PhD. Kaihatu earned his PhD at the University of Delaware.

PhD in hand, he started out at the Office of Naval Research, doing ocean wave modeling for Navy forecasts. Kaihatu explains the kinds of data used in his equations, and how he used similar techniques to predict other fluid patterns, like rip currents, for the Navy.

Now at Texas A&M University, he often works on multidisciplinary research projects. He describes the challenges and pleasures of working with other scientists, biologists and chemists, on a particular NIH project. The team looked at Galveston Bay’s superfund sites. Kaihatu was the “disaster guy” modeling what might happen if areas with capped sediments were hit by a big storm. The idea was to plan ahead to avoid contamination and a health disaster in the area.

During the NEES project (2004-2014), Kaihatu had a chance to develop a payload project as part of a larger experiment in the Oregon State University wave tank facility, the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. He studied the impact of short waves on tsunami waves found interesting things, including a strong dependence of short wave-fields on where a tsunami breaks, which suggest that a storm’s smaller waves could affect tsunami behavior.

He discusses another experiment, an expansion of the short wave idea, performed in a large wave flume instead of directional wave basin, with and without sediment. He discusses the challenge of dealing with large amounts of data in coastal engineering, when varied conditions at times give different results.

He discusses the evolution of the coastal engineering profession. Traditionally, he says, research engineers use models to study tsunamis. Over the last several decades, however, researchers are getting access to photos and videos of tsunami waves, which challenge the conventional wave models. One of the first sets of tsunami photos, Kaihatu explains, were taken by tourist named Anders Grawin during the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand. Grawin’s photos revealed unexpected wave behavior: The tsunami was not just a solitary wave, but more like a bunch of waves, with high compression of the water surface.

In one of his projects, Kaihatu studied the leading edge waves of the tsunami and how sediment gets transported. In his wave tank experiments, he ran long periodic waves and short waves, which resulted in a rich and complex data set. He hopes to publish the material later this year.

Another of Kaihatu’s project involves experimenting with waves around islands, looking at effects on inland inundation. In the Mentawai Islands of Sumatra, people thought the islands would protect the shore. But experiments and numerical modeling showed that the islands did not provide shelter. Kaihatu worked with USC engineers at the OSU wave tank facility to validate the earlier work. It was one of the first projects undertaken under the NSF NHERI award. The Hinsdale Lab is one of the largest wave tank facilities in the U.S., and Kaihatu was pleased that it was feasible and affordable to build his model islands there at OSU.

For more information about Jim Kaihatu’s academic work, visit his web page at the Texas A&M Department of Civil Engineering.

In the second half of this interview, Dr. Scott Brandenberg provides a fascinating and detailed overview of his first major research project, which was to study propagation of earthquake ground motions through soft soil layer —  from painstakingly building the models, to testing them and then analyzing the results.

Among other things, Brandenberg explains why it’s important to measure the sheer strength properly over a wide range of shaking intensities, not just for the really strong ground motions, a finding he says is in parallel with other fundamental profiling studies.

Today, DesignSafe radio host Dan Zehner starts a conversation with geotechnical research engineer Scott Brandenberg, engineering professor at UCLA. In his investigations, Brandenberg employs the very large geotechnical centrifuge at the UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling, a NHERI experimental facility.

Brandenberg was raised on a cattle ranch, where he helped his father fix machinery. What hooked him on engineering as a kid, he says, was entering a toothpick bridge competition. He majored in geotechnical engineering at Cal Poly in San Louis Obispo, and in graduate school at UC Davis, he did research with professors Ross Boulanger and Bruce Kutter. Brandenberg enjoyed grad school at UC Davis so much that he ended up completing his PhD there. Although he has been on faculty at UCLA for about 12 years, he spends much of his research time at the UC Davis centrifuge — a world-class facility that’s available to researchers everywhere.

Geotechnical centrifuge. Brandenberg describes the nine-meter radius centrifuge, which was originally used by NASA to test components in high-G fields. The machine can reach up to about 80 Gs. When the centrifuge spins at 60 Gs, the nine-foot arm is spinning about one-and-a-half times per second. Brandenberg jokes: “It’s like the world’s biggest blender.”

Brandenberg explains how soil modeling via centrifuge works, including the scaling effect, and why understanding soil behavior is so important in seismic engineering. Centrifuge testing mimics real, field-level stress conditions — the behavior of soil under stress.

Spinning — and shaking. Not only does the contraption spin, Brandenberg explains that the soil models are built in containers that rest on top of a shake table. Then, while the soil models are spinning around, researchers impose earthquake motions on them. He explains the scaling effect that high-G force has for simulating earthquakes. Time gets compressed, he says; it takes mere seconds to impose a shaking-motion equivalent to a one-minute-long earthquake.

In each soil model, hundreds of sensors monitor and record acceleration, displacement, and even water pressure inside the soil. Researchers also embed structures with strain gauges mounted to them to measure the bending or the axial load demands on a structure.

Brandenberg emphasized that researchers make models to capture fundamental mechanisms of loading, not to mimic the world perfectly. By measuring simplified models that let them capture fundamental load mechanisms — researchers ultimately understand how engineers should be doing design calculations for real infrastructure, on real sites that are more complicated and difficult.

In the second half of the podcast, Brandenberg provides a fascinating and detailed overview of his first major research project, which was to study propagation of earthquake ground motions through soft soil layer —  from painstakingly building the models, to testing them and then analyzing the results.

Among other things, Brandenberg explains why it’s important to measure the sheer strength properly over a wide range of shaking intensities, not just for the really strong ground motions, a finding he says is in parallel with other fundamental profiling studies.

In part two of our interview with hazards engineer John van de Lindt, we learn how his career expanded from earthquake engineering to other hazards.

After the NEESsoft project, van de Lindt won a grant for investigating sustainable buildings, looking at tornado loading, trying to reduce damage and injury in expansive soils. The team’s structure provided safety by devising shelter in basement with sustainable backfill that prevents basement walls from being damaged. Ironically, during this time, his own family lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and was caught in the famous 2011 EF4 tornado that ripped through the area. Although his house was not damaged, he worked on an NSF RAPID grant to do reconnaissance on the area damage. (NHERI’s own David Prevatt led that work, showing what a small world it is for natural hazards engineers.)

He explains that, interestingly, mitigation methods in one hazard can translate to other hazards, which is why collaborative work is so beneficial. He says it is a popular PhD dissertation topic these days: showing how it’s possible to port a method from one hazard to another.

Currently, van de Lindt is co-director of the Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning, a NIST-funded center at Colorado State University.

And he is still working on wood projects. He describes wrapping up a project focused on cross laminated timber, which he describes as plywood on steroids. (Take 2x6 planks, laminated with epoxy, and build a large wall) Like the Tall Wood project, it shows that wood is strong enough to be used for building 10 10-18 story structures.

FEMA P69 analysis, “rational” approach to establish perf factors. For CLT. To establish update to building code in ASCE 2022.

Although he admits engineers grumble about building codes, and the amount of work involved in creating them, but they are what make buildings in the U.S. and Japan the safest in the world.

He describes how, in hazards engineering, multiple fundamental projects often lead to one really focused project. Or sometimes it’s just a matter of an ASCE committee doing the work to return to other, related codes, or talk to engineering groups in other countries, to “find the missing pieces.” Committees try to fill in the gaps, he says, so the world can share the data that codes are based on. “It’s how stuff becomes code,” he says.

Indeed, Van de Lindt gives back to the engineering community in these important ways. As a member of NHERI’s Network Independent Advisory Committee (NIAC), he sits with academics and practitioners to review the NHERI quarterly reports and independent advice for the grant managers and NSF.

NHERI CENTRIFUGE USERS' WORKSHOP

Hosted by the UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling

Friday, May 18, 8AM-5PM PST

Register on the DesignSafe website: 

https://www.designsafe-ci.org/learning-center/training/workshops/3rd-annual-centrifuge-users/

WORKSHOP DETAILS:

The Center for Geotechnical Modeling will be hosting a one-day centrifuge users’ workshop at the NHERI equipment facility at UC Davis on Friday, May 18th, 2018. The workshop will include tours and lectures by UC Davis personnel and outside users that will allow participants to understand the capabilities of the centrifuge facility, explore research opportunities and challenges, and discuss specific details toward developing proposals.

Participation will be limited and priority registration will be given to:

1. faculty planning to submit or participate in the development of NSF proposals to use the centrifuge facility at UC Davis;
2. research team members currently funded to use the centrifuge facility;
3. other individuals interested in learning about the NHERI equipment facility at UC Davis.

Limited travel support will be available for workshop participants and those interested in receiving travel support should indicate so using the workshop registration form on this page. Participants receiving funds will be reimbursed for actual expenses up to a pre-assigned threshold of $1000 (junior faculty) or $500 (senior faculty). Currently funded NSF research teams are expected to support their travel costs within their existing research funds.

Today our host Dan Zehner talks with renowned earthquake engineer John van de Lindt, who has spent the past 20 years exploring wood-structure engineering and community resilience. Van de Lindt also is active in the NHERI hazards engineering community.

As an undergraduate, he started as a physics major, then moved to criminal justice and considered becoming a lawyer. Fortunately for the engineering world, he was inspired by a Statics course professor and changed his major to structural engineering – and went on to earn a graduate degree. Ultimately, he appreciates the transfer of knowledge: teaches earthquake engineering and wood.

He describes working as an engineer studying off shore structures: deep water oil platforms. It was his work at Michigan Tech that led him to testing wood structures. For one thing, he laughs, wood was a cheap material. He focused on testing shear walls in wood. (Sheer walls resist inertial loads, specifically the side-to-side forces.)

He explains that in the early 2000s, there were not many wood projects being funded, and they did not tend to be seismic projects. He says wood was thought of as a “conventional product,” meaning that it tended to be used in standard building projects --  although wood is used in less conventional ways In earthquake-prone regions.

Next, van de Lindt describes being part of a rather spectacular large wood project in Japan, called NEESWood. There, from 2005-2009, a group focused on building a mid-rise, six-story building — to a performance based seismic design. The shake at the E-Defense facility validated that design.

Building on such findings, a current wood project is underway at UC San Diego. The project, called Tall Wood is led by van de Lindt’s former student Shiling Pei. It will validate a 10-story at full scale at UCSD. Van de Lindt says that with so many universities and industry partners, including architects, involved, it is now possible we may see large wood buildings actually implemented. This project recently completed their first round of testing at UC San Diego this past summer.

After 2009, van de Lindt was part of a project called NEESsoft. It looked at large buildings with soft stories in San Francisco, buildings with relatively unsupported first floors that served as garages or retail space. Van de Lindt says everyone knew the buildings were dangerous but that the building owners no real incentives to retrofit. The NEESsoft project developed retrofits to protect buildings – which ultimately would prevent population dislocation after an earthquake. The team tested number of retrofits, including FEMA-based retrofits and performance based retrofits, hoping to give options to building owners. Because the buildings already existed, he says, there are many constraints, but achieved the best solution. He describes collapsing a four-story building to demonstrate what would happen without retrofits. Soft-story retrofits are now mandatory and still ongoing in San Francisco.