Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center's rss feeds http://peer.berkeley.edu/pages/news/rss_feed.xml http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/opensees_2008_report.html The 2008 OpenSees Days User and Modeling Workshops held Sept 8th and 9th were a success. To read more about the event, ... http://peer.berkeley.edu/events/2008/2008-18-08_Wenchuan-Seminar/video_event.html http://peer.berkeley.edu/events/2008/2008-18-08_Wenchuan-Seminar/speaker_presentation.html http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/stewart_research_prize.html Professor Jonathan P. Stewart has been awarded the 2008 ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize for notable achievements in research related to civil engineering. Stewart has been a PEER researcher since 1997 and has led and contributed to many projects in the Core and Lifelines Programs. Some of the topics investigated... http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/stewart_team_greece.html Professor Jonathan P. Stewart, a PEER researcher, lead a team to study the seismological, geotechnical, and structural earthquake effects of the June 8 2008 Mw=6.5 eartqhuake in Greece. For more information see the Geo-Engineering Earthquake Reconnaissance (GEER) report. http://peer.berkeley.edu/events/2008/china_eq_presentation.html In collaboration with the University of California, The City of San Francisco, PEER's Business Industry Partners, PG&E, SEAONC and EERI, PEER is hosting a seminar that will present observations and lessons learned about the May 12, 2008 magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan Earthquake in eastern Sichuan, China from the perspective of Chinese and American experts who have visited the affected region. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/la_eq_july_2008.html The July 29, 2008 earthquake in Los Angeles should be a reminder to the residents of California that large earthquakes are a reality in our state. If yesterday's moderate magnitude 5.4 earthquake had been magnitude 6.4, there would ... http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/peer_sponsors_students.html PhD students Patrick Wilson (UCSD), Ahmadreza Mortezaie (UCLA), Ben Mason (UCB) and Pirooz Kashighandi (UCLA), were selected by PEER to receive complementary registration to the EERI Technical Seminar, "Practical Applications to Deep Foundations: Buildings, Bridges, and Ports." These four students attended the seminar which was hosted in San Francisco on July 23 and ... http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/china_eq_2008.html The University of California Office of the President supported a team of researchers to conduct reconnaissance from July 4 - 7, 2008 in several cities affected by the Wenchuan Earthquake. This document, complied by Khalid Mosalam and Nicholas Sitar from UC Berkeley, includes images and commentary on buildings, bridges, dams, schools, faulting, landslides, slope stabilization, and tunnels. It also provides some examples of good vs. poor performance, catalogs some reconstruction materials and procedures, and draws some conclusions about the elements that caused failure and collapse during the earthquake. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/fenves_dean.html Gregory Fenves, PEER researcher and former chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the UC Berkeley, has accepted the position of Dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Fenves has provided active leadership in PEER since its inception in 1996, as founding director of PEER's Lifelines Program and Business and Industry Partner Program, as the developer of PEER’s comprehensive modeling software platform OpenSees, and as member of the PEER Research Committee throughout the ten year span as an NSF Engineering Research Center. He plans to continue supporting PEER and its activities at UT Austin. PEER wishes the new Dean Fenves success at his new post! http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/china_eq_2008.html This reconnaissance report was created by the Miyamoto International following the investigation of the affected region by Kit Miyamoto, CEO of Miyamoto International. On May 30, 2008, PEER hosted an informal briefing by Kit about the earthquake for students, faculty and other interested parties at UC Berkeley. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/china_eq_2008.html This report was created by the National Center for Research of Earthquake Engineering in Taiwan (NCREE) by Chu-Chieh J. Lin & Juin-Fu Chai. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/nga_models_published.html This week the February 2008 issue of the earthquake engineering journal, Earthquake Spectra (EQS), was released. The entire issue is dedicated to research papers about the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) models. A listing of the researcher papers included in the EQS issue may be found at the NGA project web page. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/tbi_cssc_oes.html The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) signed research contracts with the California Seismic Safety Commission (CSSC) and California Office of Emergency Services (OES) to investigate and quantify seismic performances of tall buildings in California. This initiates a new task as part of the PEER Tall Buildings Initiative. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/deep_foundations_seminar.html PEER is offering to sponsor the registration fee for two faculty or student applicants from PEER affiliated universities to attend the upcoming EERI Technical Seminar. The seminar entitled “Practical Applications to Deep Foundations: Buildings, Bridges, and Ports” is a full day event that will discuss performance-based approaches to the design and analysis of deep foundations. The seminar will be hosted in Seattle on July 15, San Francisco on July 23 and Los Angeles on July 24. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/china_eq_2008.html The May 12, 2008 earthquake caused widespread damage to the local infrastructure in China. This reconnaissance report (PDF file - 2 MB) was written by Yan Xiao after his visit to the affected areas within several days of the earthquake. Yan Xiao is a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Southern California, a PEER affiliated university. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/leslie_robertson.html Leslie Robertson, renowned structural engineer of many buildings worldwide including the World Trade Center, visited the UC Berkeley campus on May 1, 2008. His initial lecture about the relationship between architecture and structural engineering was sponsored by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/fema_461_publication.html FEMA has just announced the release of a new publication, FEMA 461: Interim Testing Protocols for Determining the Seismic Performance Characteristics of Structural and Nonstructural Components. This document was developed with the collaboration of PEER and other research centers with the purpose of developing testing protocols that determine fragility functions for quantifying seismic losses to structural and nonstructural building components. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/peer_new_outreach_director.html PEER is excited to announce the addition of Ms. Heidi Faison as the new Outreach Director. Heidi comes to PEER with a unique background in both engineering and outreach. http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/2008/moehle_boase_award.html CEE Professor Jack Moehle has been awarded the Arthur J. Boase Award "for his research to improve understanding of the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete structures and for his leadership in transferring research results into practice." http://peer.berkeley.edu/news/news_archive.html