DesignSafe Radio

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 th

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 t

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: faculty planning to submit or participate in the development of NSF proposals to use the centrifuge facility at UC Davis; research team members currently funded to use the centrifuge facility; 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.

The economics of natural hazards engineering Kevin Simmons, Professor of Economics Austin College After spending 17 years working for an electric utility, Kevin Simmons enrolled in PhD program at Texas Tech thinking about starting a new career in the energy sector. But then, a prominent wind engineering researcher, Kishor Mehta, recruited him to examine the societal impacts of engineering against wind hazards. After examining variables like MLS data in Galveston, Texas, and running models, Simmons determined that indeed, wind mitigation features had strong positive impact on the selling price of a home. That became his dissertation. Since then, Simmons has found his calling as a researcher, including a stint at the National Severe Storms Lab in Norman, Oklahoma. Today, he continues to investigate the economics of natural hazards mitigation. Simmons describes his work studying the town of Moore, Oklahoma, which suffered 3 EF5 tornadoes in 14 years. He discusses the specific mitigations incorporated into the city’s building code, including things like wind-rated garage doors. His studies indicated that, over time, the cost of implementing the codes beats the estimated damage across the life of the house, with a benefit-to-cost ratio of 3:1. And he describes other assessments, including the hurricane-prone zone in Florida, where coastal areas have additional building code requirements. (That study will appear in the May issue of Land Economics.) Overall, he says, building codes reduce property damage and loss in two ways. First, homes built after code implementation had 53% less damage. Second, the codes reduced the likelihood that an insurance claim would need to be filed at all. All toted up, there was a 72 percent reduction in filed claims from wind losses, compared to construction cost increases. Simmons details the findings. Simmons discusses different economic considerations when it comes to flooding. He stresses that city planners need to consider potential flooding before building. As an economist, he finds it tragic that people do not take wind (or other) hazards into account before building. Generally speaking, he says, it doesn’t cost that much more to build a strong structure. Retrofits cost more, he says. And he is not optimistic that people are prepared to take natural hazards into account. “The human tendency is to fix things quick and cheaply,” he says. Ironically, he adds, in his studies he has observed that a destructive tornado will raise awareness about life safety during storms, and will tend to spike demand for tornado shelters. Nevertheless, new construction is still problematic for most towns in Oklahoma. Data show that new codes increase the cost of construction, and cities fear that developers will avoid building in communities with higher building costs. His research shows, however, that this is not necessary a problem. He recently compared Moore, Oklahoma, a city with tough codes, with the nearby city of Norman, without such building regulations. The study found there was no difference in real estate development between towns. Simmons discusses retrofits for wind storms, and specifically, work that U of Florida researcher David Prevatt has done to devise techniques for driving down the cost of retrofits. He refers to a recent study at the U of Alabama, where homes built to new standards have been shown to increase in value. If this data holds up across markets, Simmons says, it is justified to retrofit, and retrofitting may be seen as an investment, not a cost. He suggests that states have incentives that encourage citizens in wind-hazard regions to retrofit. For an economist like Simmons, it is exciting that engineers are able to remove financial objections people might have to retrofitting their homes and businesses.

Barbeque diplomacy with Ben Preston Ben Preston is fascinated not just by scientific problems, but by how humans respond to weather and other large-scale hazards. He wants to know what societies can do to make different, better choices – to be more resilient over time. After events like hurricanes and wildfires, we feel vulnerable. Cities want to prepare better, attribute responsibility and grant compensation. But why do we value putting people in low lying coastal areas in the first place? Why do we value building expensive subdivisions at wildland interface? Preston discusses risk and our perception of it. Why protect against terrorism but not hurricanes? He says when it comes to hazard and risk, people tend to de-prioritize disasters that are familiar, routine, that we do not have control over. We figure we have to live with it. Because we view terrorism as a human choice, Preston says, we tend to think they can prevent it. In terms of resilient infrastructure, another problem we face is the consequences of old decisions. So when city managers are trying to manage storm water, for example, they are concerned about future hazards, but the may be constrained by an antiquated storm water system. For example, in Houston, people are dealing with the fact that the city is built in a flood plain. Outcomes are products of old human decisions, he says. So how do we deal with problems in the future? Preston says we have to be in it for the long haul. We can’t be resilient instantly. Preston says the good news is that the concept of resilience has caught on at the local level, where the problems are immediate and an existential issue. In situations where communities need to leave an area, Preston says, people are forced to assess their values and make hard decisions, such as how do to pay for the move or preserve the community. Cities and state governments can enhance resilience by thinking long term, by considering what problems will look like decades in the future. Depending on where you live, Preston says, people can develop common values. For instance, protecting homes and people should be a value. So how can communities be proactive? We have a long way to go, he says. Barbeque diplomacy. Preston says it can be hard to convince people to adopt resilience as a value. So, he practices what he calls “barbeque diplomacy,” a friendly approach to engaging people in informal settings -- something he learned while living in Australia, where they take their barbies seriously. You can try to show people data, he says, but it won’t help if they don’t perceive it’s their problem. So, Preston says when talking with people who don’t share his values, he tries to give examples that might affect people personally, such as electricity costs. Try to have realistic expectations, he says. People need to see the benefits of adopting policies that ensure resilience. We’ll get there, he says. https://www.rand.org/about/people/p/preston_benjamin_lee.html [email protected] @bl_preston https://www.rand.org/news/experts.html?topic=natural-hazards https://www.rand.org/about/people/p/preston_benjamin_lee.html

Episode 28 Science Based Decision Making by Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure

Do you ever wonder how meteorologists get their hurricane data? On today’s show, host Dan Zehner gets the answers from Commander Justin Kibbey, one of NOAA’s “hurricane hunter” pilots. Kibbey flies NOAA’s P-3 Orion aircraft missions straight into hurricanes, multiple times, while a crew of weather experts and technicians gather data to predict the path and strength of the storm. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Kibbey spent 10 years doing aerial reconnaissance and wartime flights over places like Iraq and Afghanistan. He flew the P-3, a four-engine turboprop designed to fly low and hunt submarines. After his Naval service, Kibbey joined NOAA’s crew of hurricane hunters, where he is wrapping up his eighth season. Kibbey describes NOAA’s rugged planes (built in the 1970s and based on 1950s designs) as flying research laboratories. The aircraft are powerful, with redundant systems, and built to fly low. Each mission is crewed with 15-20 people: NOAA officers, navigators, government and civilian technicians and meteorologists – and scientists, all working to collect data as they fly though hurricane storms. Kibbey describes the low altitude flights (5,000 to 12,000 feet), aiming for the “sweet spot,” or the eye of the storm, to get what he calls “an MRI” of the hurricane. In the no-wind, low-pressure center, researchers gather data for creating the spaghetti models that the public studies to see where a storm will travel. One tool used by hurricane hunters is tail Doppler radar, which reveals a storm’s inner structure. The missions also deploy “dropsondes” small cylindrical tubes that fall through the atmosphere measuring pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed, providing a profile of a column of air. Assembled together, these data paint an accurate picture of a storm and its intensity. NOAA’s planes cover the breadth of a storm, 400 miles or more. While satellites can provide some data, a plane in the storm provides the most and most accurate information. Kibbey describes flying through Superstorm Sandy, the largest he’s experienced. He also recalls his first mission as a hurricane hunter, an eight-hour flight through Hurricane Earl. It was a white-knuckle ride, until the plane passed into the eye. He describes the shock of seeing stars overhead – and a bolt of lightning that lit up the entire eye wall. One of his most turbulent flights was in Hurricane Irma, which put the plane through the wringer, he says. The crew on this flight was particularly stressed – because many of them had family in the path of the hurricane. The goal for hurricane hunters is to find out where the storm is will go, via reconnaissance and research. Technology constantly improves, and Kibbey speculates someday the research can be gathered remotely. Already, crews launch UAVs into hurricanes, into places too dangerous to fly a plane. And satellites may one day be able make readings as accurate as instruments on flying laboratories. Until then, from June through November, hurricane hunters fly through storms gathering data that can save lives. Hurricane data, including photos, from the 2017 hurricane season www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/data_sub/hurr.html More about NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters www.omao.noaa.gov/learn/aircraft-o…urricane-hunters Hurricane Hunters on Facebook www.facebook.com/NOAAHurricaneHunters/ National Hurricane Center, to see data collected by the Hurricane Hunters. www.nhc.noaa.gov/ Justin Kibbey www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/…F(DavidHall).jpg

Today, DesignSafe Radio host Dan Zehner talks with Joe Fargione, science director with The Nature Conservancy. The largest non-governmental organization in the world, The Nature Conservancy is also one of the first land trusts. Fargione explains how, by purchasing land in need of protection, the group saves natural environments with a non-confrontational approach. The group is also active in protecting oceans and freshwater areas. As a researcher with TNC, Fargione focuses on zero-carbon energy release as a way to protect against global warming. He explains why preventing a two-degree temperature rise is so important. Fargione discusses the science behind research projects that keep carbon in the earth – for example protecting peat-based wetlands that, if drained, would emit carbon into the atmosphere. He and his diverse collaborators focus on natural methods of preventing climate change, often using remote sensing to analyze land characteristics and compare distributions, for example, of forests. He helps land owners and managers keep carbon emissions low. Tidal wetlands, he explains, are important to preserve because salt water, unlike encroaching freshwater, has no methane emissions. Similarly, for farmers, cover crops help keep carbon in the soil – and can also increase yields and retain nutrients. Fargione describes a successful project with the Soil Health Partnership and corn growers. Fargione says that efforts to retain carbon in the soil and water helps local environments, land owners and farmers, and helps keep global temperatures from rising. Follow TNC’s Cool Green Science blog for more stories about conservation science.

Episode 25 World's Worst Weather On Mount Washington by Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure

Episode 24 Tsunami Resistant Evacuation Structures by Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure

Episode 23 The Life Of A Scientist by Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure

Episode 22 Ski Patrol And Meteorology by Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure

On this week’s episode, Dan Zehner interviews an expert on oceans and ocean storms. Dr. Philip Orton studies ocean physics and evaluates coastal problems, such as storm surge, at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Growing up on Lake St. Clair in Michigan, Orton developed an affinity for water early on. Perhaps it was surfing on those stormy lake waves that got him interested in studying storms and thinking like an oceanographer. As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, he majored in physical oceanography, an offshoot of engineering. His parents, cancer researchers, were role models – scientists who wanted to help people. “Storms were always underneath it all,” he says. Orton completed his postdoc at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, which became his research home. At SIT, he studies ocean and atmospheric interactions -- and climate, with a focus on sea level rise. He works with influential researchers developing modeling systems in ocean science. Hurricanes Irene and Sandy Orton talks about his trial-by-fire during Hurricane Irene, when he was one of the primary scientists providing public forecasts -- on his blog and on local television. That experience helped provide similar services during hurricane Sandy, especially providing real-time instruction about storm surges for the individuals living in the affected areas. He describes working with multidisciplinary teams to solve the post-storm problems in the New York City area, including brainstorming with a variety of specialists (teachers, public policy experts, engineers) to design resilient coastal community. In particular he talks about a project to rebuild the Hudson Bay oyster beds, which will serve as a living breakwater to protect Staten Island (http://www.silive.com/news/2014/06/60_million_living_oyster_reef.html). Phase 1 of the project involves creating a scale model. He and Dan discussed the possibility of using the Oregon State University wave tank facility, a NHERI experimental site, for testing the model oyster bed. Orton details his work with designers, including artists, who have influenced his thinking about what a resilient coastline might look like. He also discusses the complexity of solving the problem of sea level rise and storm surge. For example, he says, understanding human behavior crucial. Many residents in the coastal area do not understand tides and do not know how to swim. And there is terminology to learn. What does it mean to a homeowner if he’s facing a 6-to-11 foot storm surge? Orton talks about improvements in forecasting since hurricane Sandy, which help people better understand the actual impact of a storm. He discusses the importance of probabilistic data, which you obtain by running the model for 100 different forecasts, representing a range of different weather conditions. The results can tell you what the median flood height might be. At the Stevens institute, Orton and his colleagues provide probabilistic forecasts and data on flood hazards in the NYC area, including near worst case scenarios, which are crucial for decision-making.

Today’s guest is Frank Marks, legendary NOAA meteorologist and tropical cyclone expert. Since the 1980s, he’s flown 10,000 hours on NOAA’s P3 Orion aircraft, including through many, many hurricanes. Marks, who now leads NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, clearly enjoys learning. He shares some of his favorite experiences with us. The P3 Orion Marks discusses the P3 aircraft capabilities and describes flying into his first hurricane, Hurricane Alan. After that ride, he explains, seeing the data coming in through all the instruments, he was hooked. He discusses early experiments trying to understand the nature of the hurricane eyewall replacement cycle. The Doppler revolution In 1981, another highlight for Marks was the addition of Doppler radar to the P3 aircraft, which he describes as a revolutionary technique for understanding the three-dimensional structure of storms. Marks details the ways that Doppler, which he calls a “CAT scan of the wind,” improved scientific understanding of hurricanes. A watershed for meteorologists, Doppler data helped scientists figure out storm structure and how they work. He recalls the enthusiasm with which he and his colleagues “did some of the best science ever.” Surviving Hugo One of Marks’s scariest experiences, complete with a P3 engine on fire, involves flying into category 5 Hurricane Hugo at 1,500 feet. It wasn’t exactly planned, he explains, to fly that low into wind speeds over 150 MPH. He describes the miscalculations, the incredible view — and how the crew survived the experience. “The data was incredible,” he says, “And it was a labor of love to analyze.” Rainfall climatology Over and over, Marks says, serendipity played a role in his work. He describes working with a NASA team interested in tropical storms called the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a satellite system that examined storms around the globe. By chance he stopped to chat with the TRMM chief scientist, and he ended up volunteering to analyze the TRMM hurricane data — which had yet to be examined. That, in turn, led to a project that used TRMM to devise global climatology for 700 tropical systems. Connecting to TACC In 2008, after a series of active and damaging hurricane seasons, NOAA formed a committee to improve forecasts, which became the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project that Marks now leads. By chance, the team was offered 1 million hours on the newly available Texas Advanced Computer Center – an opportunity to put the new system through its paces. Marks describes the challenge of feeding large weather datasets to the models on the TACC system. Fortunately, the data scientist on his team made it all work. That pioneering experiment laid the groundwork for today’s weather scientists to use supercomputers like TACC for accurate and real-time hurricane forecasts.

Legendary hurricane hunter Frank Marks Today’s guest is Frank Marks, legendary NOAA meteorologist and tropical cyclone expert. Since the 1980s, he’s flown 10,000 hours on NOAA’s P3 Orion aircraft, including through many, many hurricanes. Marks, who now leads NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, clearly enjoys learning. He shares some of his favorite experiences with us. Curiosity and a career path. He got curious about weather in grade school. His neighbor, a science teacher, kept weather instruments in his yard. Soon Marks was one of his students, learning how to make measurements with such instruments. He joined the school’s weather club and learned things like how to decode meteorological messages that came in by teletype machine. He explains using “old fashioned” methods of gathering and interpreting data to make forecasts, which were and posted at school every day. He lived near an IBM facility, and he describes a senior class project that involved learning how to program an IBM computer, using punch cards, to do meteorological work. In college, Marks enjoyed learning from brilliant professors and became interested in fluid dynamics. In graduate school at MIT, he had an opportunity to do a three-month internship in Senegal -- to work on an important Atlantic tropical weather experiment that involved multiple aircraft and a fleet of weather ships. It was a life-changing experience. Marks urges young researchers to take risks when opportunities knock. He details his “trial by fire” during that internship, which included doing a lot of analysis by hand. Eventually, by studying lots of data and watching for patterns, he became an expert on tropical convection variability. That internship led to a job offer from NOAA’s hurricane research lab — where he’s worked for the past 37 years.

In the U.S., in the wake of the 2017 hurricanes, she and her team helped coordinate recon teams in Texas, post Hurricane Harvey. She describes reconnaissance efforts as a way for to see if engineers “got it right.” Was it a problem with the structure or codes? Or did the hazard deliver an unexpected load? Unlike with laboratory and computer simulations, after a disaster, engineers get to forensically try to find out what exactly happened. Trying to capture the hazard loading on one hand and on the other, understand what the structure’s capacity was. Reconnaissance teams get to ask “Why?” On reconnaissance missions, teams not only gather data, they interact with people in the community. She says she learned that people’s political and religious beliefs affected their willingness to prepare for disaster. Trust in government or religious fatalism both inclined people to invest less in securing their homes and property. Understanding such community attitudes can help engineers reach people in language they can understand. She says in religious communities, it makes sense to have workshops on resilience and preparedness run through their church, by their pastors. She describes making recon assessments, covering dozens of homes each day. Her teams use an application called Fulcrum, a mobile data collector. This season, her teams in Texas post-Harvey collected 1,685 assessments; in Florida post-Irma 1,094 assessments; and in Puerto Rico after Maria 260 assessments. The team in the Virgin Islands is currently collecting data. Kijewski-Correa says she always includes time to speak with people, even though it slows things down. People who have been through disaster often ask questions about their homes, and she answers as best she can. She describes being amazed at the strength of people she met in Texas, who showed true American spirit. “Strength greater than a building,” she says. She discusses how communities make decisions, even without much data. They took care of their neighbors, which was what they did know. But to carry out new engineering ideas, people need to trust. Engineers need to know how communities make decisions, what the barriers are to rebuilding, what the opportunities are. She calls it “the last mile problem.” Engineers need to know all the things that must happen so that the community can adopt a new system. No matter how good the engineers’ math is, they need that data to close the deal, to complete the rebuilding. Kijewski-Correa looks forward to NSF-funded projects that are able to collaborate with other funding agencies – in order to do what’s necessary to complete the rebuilding of disaster-damaged communities. “It can’t just be a miracle when the work is all the way complete. We have to do something more systematic,” she says. The last mile takes hard work and commitment, she says. If engineers are doing research to save lives and property, then more human-centered, interdisciplinary research is necessary, including cobbling together different sources of funding. For her part, she looks to NGOs, foundations, public and private sector funding. She says engineers need to stop talking to engineers, stop coming to conferences, and start talking with social scientists and public policy experts. Have new conversations, she says. In Haiti, where she and others trained locals in engineering basics, she says the people were accustomed to using their own ingenuity for solving problems: designing stoves, inventing ways to handle flooding. One evening one of her Haitian “problem solvers” described the problem: “The answer was always inside us, but no one bothered to show us.” The statement resonated with Kijewski-Correa, the idea that answers reside inside us, within every community. She sees it as her job is to empower people to implement those answers. To help them tap their ability be part of the process. Resilience is inside all of us, she says. She is committed to helping everyone find that answer.

We all have a story to tell about how natural hazards have impacted our lives. Today, we hear from listeners and past podcast guests about their personal encounters with hazards and their aftermath.

Engineer Tracy Kijewski-Correa has been doing post-disaster reconnaissance missions since 2005, after the Indian Ocean tsunami. On today’s episode, host Dan Zehner talks with Kijewski-Correa about assessing structural damage and the difficulty of rebuilding communities hit by a natural disaster. At Notre Dame, Kijewski-Correa holds a dual position in engineering and global affairs, the first engineer there to hold such a joint appointment. With her engineering background, she studies how political, socio-economic, religious and cultural norms come into play when making public policy decisions – including preparing for disasters and re-building after one. She cites the example of Haiti, where seven years after a major earthquake the country is still not returned to normal. Thanks to NGOs and others, there are new materials and skill sets to build resilient houses in Haiti, but because people do not have access to mortgages, many Haitians are still in shelters, waiting for financing to access those new homes. She explains that the engineering world lacks proper pipelines for linking fundamental research, such as post-disaster assessment, to concrete advancements in building codes, or practical advocacy programs. What holds back progress, she says, is that different funding agencies have differing priorities and timelines – making it hard to link the projects and complete the work necessary. After Hurricane Sandy, there was a remarkable coordination of NSF RAPID funding, which documented the damage, sustained funding from Army Corps of Engineers, to develop the coastal hazard simulation tool to map and recommend structural changes, and then funding from the state of New Jersey, which was necessary to implement the changes. It was a rare example of early seed funding, linked to translational funding down a pipeline that led to successfully rebuilding the area. Dual appointment engineers are pioneers, she says. You have to have an understanding of social constructs – if you want stuff to really happen. Academia traditionally does not focus on solving real problems, she explains. With her dual appointment, she tries to push the traditional research/education model to do more translational work. For most engineers, translational work is like a “night job,” work done on weekends and evenings. During the day, engineers do traditional, NSF-funded research, work that leads to publishing. Work such as post-earthquake reconnaissance or community-building, has to be done in an academic’s free time. And it takes years to make a difference. She’s grateful that Notre Dame recognizes the importance of having engineers with a dual focus. She credits it small size and its religious mission. Kijewski-Correa details the problems in Haiti, starting with difficulty reaching the cities after the 2010 earthquake. Hurricane Matthew in 2016 made the situation even worse. It was a struggle to move from reconnaissance to rebuilding. When a major earthquake struck Chile in 2016, she says that NGOs and funding agencies left Haiti for Chile, calculating they could be of more use in a country with an infrastructure similar to one many Western cities. Kijewski and her team are the only NGOs working to rebuild in Haiti, currently.

Do you ever wonder how meteorologists get their hurricane data? On today’s show, host Dan Zehner gets the answers from Commander Justin Kibbey, one of NOAA’s “hurricane hunter” pilots. Kibbey flies NOAA’s P-3 Orion aircraft missions straight into hurricanes, multiple times, while a crew of weather experts and technicians gather data to predict the path and strength of the storm. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Kibbey spent 10 years doing aerial reconnaissance and wartime flights over places like Iraq and Afghanistan. He flew the P-3, a four-engine turboprop designed to fly low and hunt submarines. After his Naval service, Kibbey joined NOAA’s crew of hurricane hunters, where he is wrapping up his eighth season. Kibbey describes NOAA’s rugged planes (built in the 1970s and based on 1950s designs) as flying research laboratories. The aircraft are powerful, with redundant systems, and built to fly low. Each mission is crewed with 15-20 people: NOAA officers, navigators, government and civilian technicians and meteorologists – and scientists, all working to collect data as they fly though hurricane storms. Kibbey describes the low altitude flights (5,000 to 12,000 feet), aiming for the “sweet spot,” or the eye of the storm, to get what he calls “an MRI” of the hurricane. In the no-wind, low-pressure center, researchers gather data for creating the spaghetti models that the public studies to see where a storm will travel. One tool used by hurricane hunters is tail Doppler radar, which reveals a storm’s inner structure. The missions also deploy “dropsondes” small cylindrical tubes that fall through the atmosphere measuring pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed, providing a profile of a column of air. Assembled together, these data paint an accurate picture of a storm and its intensity. NOAA’s planes cover the breadth of a storm, 400 miles or more. While satellites can provide some data, a plane in the storm provides the most and most accurate information. Kibbey describes flying through Superstorm Sandy, the largest he’s experienced. He also recalls his first mission as a hurricane hunter, an eight-hour flight through Hurricane Earl. It was a white-knuckle ride, until the plane passed into the eye. He describes the shock of seeing stars overhead – and a bolt of lightning that lit up the entire eye wall. One of his most turbulent flights was in Hurricane Irma, which put the plane through the wringer, he says. The crew on this flight was particularly stressed – because many of them had family in the path of the hurricane. The goal for hurricane hunters is to find out where the storm is will go, via reconnaissance and research. Technology constantly improves, and Kibbey speculates someday the research can be gathered remotely. Already, crews launch UAVs into hurricanes, into places too dangerous to fly a plane. And satellites may one day be able make readings as accurate as instruments on flying laboratories. Until then, from June through November, hurricane hunters fly through storms gathering data that can save lives. Hurricane data, including photos, from the 2017 hurricane season http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/data_sub/hurr.html More about NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters https://www.omao.noaa.gov/learn/aircraft-operations/about/hurricane-hunters Hurricane Hunters on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/NOAAHurricaneHunters/ National Hurricane Center, to see data collected by the Hurricane Hunters. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ Justin Kibbey http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/edouard2014/LCDRJustinKibbeyN42RF(DavidHall).jpg

What does it mean to do “reconnaissance” after a natural disaster? To find out, host Dan Zehner catches up with Ellen Rathje, an earthquake engineer at the University of Texas, Austin. Among her many interests, Rathje is a founding member and co-chair of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association (http://www.geerassociation.org). Rathje explains that although she originally wanted to be a journalist, she really liked math in high school. When she learned that civil engineers worked on big projects like bridges, she was hooked. During her undergraduate years at Cornell, the Loma Prieta earthquake occurred. She was fascinated. She decided she wanted to be the kind of engineer who designed structures that could withstand earthquakes. In 1999, as a new faculty member at UT, she was selected for a reconnaissance team investigating Turkey’s Kocaeli earthquake, a 7.6 magnitude temblor that killed 17,000 people. Rathje describes the experience and the damage she encountered, including liquefaction. On this trip, she says she came to understand the importance of collecting post-disaster information. She says natural disasters are “Nature’s large-scale tests.” With reconnaissance, we can begin to understand the results of the tests. Rathje describes GEER, an NSF-funded association that organizes recon teams. With modest federal funding, GEER volunteers document natural disaster events large and small. To date, more than 50 events have been documented, and all the reports are available on the GEER website (http://www.geerassociation.org/reconnaissance-reports/map-view). Rathje says technology is enabling better and better observations. She describes hunting for paper maps and using a camera with 3.5” floppy discs in 1999. Hand-held GPS devices helped provide latitude and longitude for observations and photos. Later came geotagging. GEER teams were among the first to geotag photos. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, a 7.0 magnitude quake that killed hundreds of thousands of people, technology was much more advanced. Rathje describes using Google Earth and digital camera synching. New recon tools included high-resolution aerial photography. Teams used sensors and weights for measuring shear wave velocity. In 2017, Rathje says, technology such as LIDAR and drones allow for fast, relatively inexpensive 3D models of damage, models which can be used in perpetuity for research. In less than 20 years, reconnaissance efforts have changed dramatically. Now, it is possible to get high quality datasets and make them publically available. Rathjes, the PI for NHERI’s cyberinfrastructure, DesignSafe, says the goal is to provide a mechanism for researchers to publish and organize their datasets for the whole research community. She discusses DesignSafe’s online data repository and the ability for researchers to publish data, much like a research paper, as a scholarly contribution. DesignSafe researchers access and analyze data in the cloud. In the Discovery workspace, tools include Jupyter and Matlab for lab experiments and simulations. Rathje describes DesignSafe’s Reconnaissance Portal with provides access to hazard event datasets. Currently, NHERI-affiliated recon teams are providing data from recent natural disasters in Mexico, Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Rathje says the most difficult disaster she experienced was the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where so many people lost their lives. Her team brought their own food, stayed in tents, and worked under the protection of armed guards. After the recon mission was over, her team worked with the United Nations to educate local Haitians about geotechnics, which would help them in rebuilding efforts.

This week Dan meets storm chaser Warren Causey, founder of The Sirens Project. Causey, an engineer with a lifelong passion for weather, studies tornadoes from a safe distance, using unmanned aerial vehicles, drones. In the interview, Causey describes growing up in Georgia and chasing storms in the mountainous Southeast, in Dixie Alley. Hoping to design weather research systems, he studied mechanical engineering, including 3D modeling and drone development. Chemistry gelled with college classmates Nolan Lunsford and Brent Bouthiller, he says, “And it escalated from there.” The three formed The Sirens Project. They study supercells and tornadoes by guiding UAVs directly into the storms. Causey details how Sirens started as a Kickstarter project, and he discusses the team’s partnership with Ag Eagle, a UAV manufacturer specializing in rugged UAVs used in farming applications. As citizen scientists, the team is careful to avoid intercepting tornadoes near populated areas. He describes the ideal intercept: a slow-moving EF4 tornado in Kansas, in the middle of nowhere. He relates his experience with the El Reno, Oklahoma, tornado on May 31, 2013. Several storm chasers lost their lives that day, including the respected meteorologist Tim Samaras, when the storm made an unexpected change-of-course. The tragic incident spurred Causey to start The Sirens Project, a safer way to study storms. Causey says working with fellow researchers is necessary for gathering more data — data that will lead to improved forecasting and storm-resistant structures. Ultimately, he wants to create models for forecasting convection, which would allow for mapping how and where tornadoes will “fire” — which would reduce false-alarms. The supercell storms that spawn tornadoes change abruptly, require many variables to generate a tornado, and are very short-lived, all of which makes tornadoes more difficult to forecast than hurricanes. The Sirens Project team is prepping for the 2018 storm season and producing a documentary on stormchasing. Causey encourages fellow weather enthusiasts to contact the group. “We love interacting with other stormchasers,” he says.

Host Dan Zehner interviews Crystal Felima, a social anthropologist who focuses on natural hazard risks and recovery in Haiti. She collects stories from residents to better understand the country’s responses to hurricanes, flooding and earthquakes. Currently, Felima is a PhD candidate at the University of Florida at Gainesville. By providing a social understanding of how disasters affect vulnerable populations in Haiti, her work is a bridge to effective technical hazard research. Felima discusses her immersive studies in the northern and southern parts of the island nation, learning the language and cultural customs. She describes a riverside community near the city of Cap-Haïtien where residents commonly use landfill materials to create new ground for building houses. The reclaimed land floods easily and the practice worsens flooding in nearby towns. For vulnerable people trying to make better lives for themselves, Felima explains, such risks are acceptable. She cites a Haitian proverb: behind every mountain is a mountain, which she says illustrates the people’s quietly ironic view of life as a series of obstacles. Haitians may face difficulties, but they are resilient. She discusses government efforts to prepare the populace for impending storms, but many rural areas are not electrified, which makes mass communication difficult. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew devastated southern portions of the country. Hundreds died, and many more were displaced. The destruction of farms had long-term effects on the availability of fresh food for the region. People are still struggling. As she collects stories from survivors, she’s learned how much people depend on aid from their communities and personal relationships – family, neighbors and relatives abroad. Gathering stories about disasters from Haitian people helps Felima understand the complexities involved in preparing for and recovering from natural disasters in Haiti, especially in poor areas. She hopes her continued research and insights will help engineers and builders improve the infrastructure in these areas.

This week, host Dan Zehner catches up with Tom Iovino, the public information director for the Florida Department of Health in Manatee County. Iovino, who mans the county’s emergency operations center during hurricanes, talks about storm preparation in the Tampa Bay area and about what he learned from Hurricane Irma. Although the Florida forecast was dire, precipitating the largest evacuation in the state’s history, Hurricane Irma took an unexpected eastward course, which improved the forecast dramatically and left the Tampa-Orlando area relatively unscathed. Despite relatively light damage, however, there was plenty to learn from this storm. For days after the storm, a major problem was lack of power. Iovino lists items missing in his own hurricane kit: an extra flashlight, a power brick, and a battery-operated fan. Traffic accidents were frequent, he says, due to incautious drivers sailing through intersections with no traffic lights. While he and his area first-responders hunkered down to wait out the storm, his center was still getting phone calls from people who decided – at the last minute – that they needed help. Such poor planning endangers the lives of first responders, and he warned that even first responders cannot rescue people in the midst of a Cat 5 hurricane. Iovino urges everyone in hurricane-prone regions to plan ahead, and the best way to know if the threat is serious is to listen to the National Weather Service. Iovino recalls what a beloved area weatherman, Dick Fletcher, was fond of saying: “If you don’t listen to what the emergency managers are telling you, you are betting your life they are wrong.” Iovino urges everyone to be safe and plan ahead, to take what they’ve learned from the last storm and apply it to the next.

Nick Mrzlak from Team Rubicon joins Dan Zehner to talk about this unusual disaster-relief organization. We learn about the group’s trick of teaming veterans and first responders and its mission to focus on the underserved. With his background of serving in the U.S. Navy, working as an emergency medical technician, teaching EMTs, and volunteering with FEMA, Mrzlak is skilled and eager to help. A volunteer with Team Rubicon since 2010, he’s worked in places like Haiti, where he trained local civilians as EMTs. He has worked full-time for Team Rubicon since December 2017. “There’s not much we can’t do,” Mrzlak says. Team Rubicon volunteers are a special breed. “A tribe,” Mrzlak laughs. In one of their first deployments, in Haiti, the Team Rubicon founders realized that pairing veterans and first responders made for especially effective teams. “These types of people want to help, and they have unique skills.” Plus, these particular volunteers crave a sense of purpose and community. Light and nimble, Team Rubicon bridges the gap between disaster and the arrival of established aid organizations, like FEMA. Mrzlak describes current work in the Houston area post-Harvey. 400-450 volunteers are still in the first phase of recovery: clearing debris, sawing down trees and hauling stuff away. They are mucking out homes, removing drywall and salvaging what’s possible – often for residents who do not have a lot to begin with. In these desperate situations, Mrzlak says, Team Rubicon volunteers form meaningful bonds with each other and with the people they help. Team Rubicon has 60,000 volunteers in the U.S. Mrzlak says 13,000 people have volunteered since Hurricane Harvey alone. In this year’s busy disaster season, teams are deployed in Texas, Puerto Rico, Florida, the Caribbean and in the Mexico City area. Mrzlak describes organization’s data-gathering and logistics. The group depends heavily on volunteers in affected regions, like local EMTs, firefighters and police. They also leverage help from corporate partners, like Home Depot, who can ship equipment and supplies to local stores. “We often set up operations in Home Depot parking lots,” Mrzlak explains. Other partners include Tyson Foods, Walmart, the National Fish and Wildlife Service, and Palantir – which provides software for mapping and tracking work orders and assets. Links from the episode: https://teamrubiconusa.org/response/capabilities-services/ https://teamrubiconusa.org/operation/operation-hard-hustle/#overview https://www.palantir.com/

Host Dan Zehner talks with Dr. Jamey Jacob of Oklahoma State University about his research on how tornadoes form using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)to gather data by flying through thunderstorms. This research has been going on since the 1960s, but most of us heard about it during the 1990s with the movie Twister. The real 'Toto' that inspired the movie is actually at the National Weather Service about 60 miles from Dr. Jacob's lab! To find out more about his research, follow him here: https://ceat.okstate.edu/weather-research-uavs-take-flight-osu

Host Dan Zehner talks with scientists whose jobs are forecasting and planning for stormsurge and flooding. Coastal engineer Cheryl Ann Blain works in the oceanography division in the Office of Naval Research. David Johnson is a professor of engineering and political science at Purdue University. At the Naval Research Lab in Mississippi, Blain develops storm surge models and forecasts with the ADCIRC tool. She discusses the history and importance of ADCIRC, one of the first hurricane modeling tools developed. It is used around the nation for regional forecasting and predicting local storm surge. ADCIRC makes relatively accurate predictions, usually within three days of the event. Blain discusses data that is used to build a forecast, including wind and topography data. She explains the trend for using ensembles of data, different groupings of info, which produce the “spaghetti plots” we see in hurricane forecasts. David Johnson agrees with Blain that some things, such as storm direction, are hard to predict because we don’t fully understand how hurricanes form. As a result, we still make guesses about what sorts of data should go into our models. One of projects Johnson works on is Louisiana’s coastal master plan project. Louisiana seeks to reduce flood risk and land loss, so policy-makers and scientists are trying to determine how factors like changing climate, population and ground subsidence will affect the region. To plan, they develop multiple scenarios and estimate risk, depending on various strategies, such as building levies or wetlands. Planners weigh priorities, which are often in conflict. For example, building a levee takes years; so should the state first dedicate itself to elevating houses? Such planning is not limited to the Gulf Coast. New Jersey and New York, after Superstorm Sandy, are making similar plans. Johnson and Blain discuss how national infrastructure is affected by storm surge affects, including NASA, which has many coastal installations. They discuss how levees prevent river flooding but then prevent natural distribution of river sediments – a natural process that creates protective coastal wetlands. In Louisiana, planners must manage river flooding as well as stormstorm flooding. Johnson and Blain discuss why it is not possible for the US to replicate the success of the Netherlands, when it comes to preventing flooding and sea inundation.

DesignSafe Radio host Dan Zehner catches up with Dr. John Vidale, renowned geophysicist and seismologist. Until recently, Vidale directed the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. Now he directs the Southern California Earthquake Center at USCCS. He discusses highlights of his research career. As a college physics student, he became enamored with geology – taking 11 geology courses in his senior year — and went on to study geophysics. He discusses the PNSN study called IMUSH, Imaging Magma Under St. Helens. His team uses various excitation sources to image and map the three-dimensional structure of underground features, including the large magma chamber, under Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams and Mount Rainer. It is the most comprehensive study of the geology under a chain of volcanos, involving numerous institutions and agencies. Also at the University of Washington, Vidale worked on the M9 Project (https://hazards.uw.edu/geology/m9/), a large, NSF-funded study exploring the potential impact of a large earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. (M9 stands for a “magnitude 9” earthquake.) Part of that PNSN study included measuring the vibrations made by Seattle Seahawks fans at CenturyLink Field (https://www.livescience.com/57441-seattle-seahawks-stadium-seismology.html)– which were especially strong after a play by Marshawn Lynch, the infamous Beast Quake (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfdJqpbUPIE&t=8s). Vidale discusses streaming data real time and educating the public about earthquake warning systems. In his new job as director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, one project he’ll undertake is developing a physical model, a hazard map, of the Southern California fault system. A large, multi-institutional undertaking, the idea is to understand the geophysical properties of the region in order to predict behaviors of the earth. Vidale says supercomputing simulations play a major role in this work. For young scientists, Vidale recommends studying chemistry and physics and learning computer tools, which are crucial for modern science experiments. In general, he warns against fake science and extreme claims. He recommends vetting information about earthquakes with reputable agencies such as the United States Geological Service and local emergency managers.

For two engineering undergrads from Puerto Rico, working on the beach is a dream job. In this week’s edition of DesignSafe Radio, host Dan Zehner meets up with these two students, who took part in NHERI’s 2017 Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Civil engineering students Hector Colon Delacruz and Peter Rivera Casillas talk to host Dan Zehner about their summer working at Oregon State University’s Hinsdale Wave Lab, one of NHERI’s eight experimental sites. Both students attend the University of Puerto Rico. Hector Colon De la Cruz, a senior, plans to earn his master’s degree in coastal engineering. Doing hands-on research at OSU confirmed his desire to be a coastal engineer. He wants to explore using mangrove plantings to prevent coastal erosion. Similarly, Peter Rivera Casillas, a surfer, says his summer experience convinced him earn an advanced degree in a profession that involves the sea: coastal engineering or oceanography. In the Hinsdale Wave Lab, the students worked on several research projects, including a multi-university effort that examined how tsunami waves are affected by conical islands. Much of their work involved creating and validating computer models; they describe using Matlab and a new tool called Celeris (https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.05984) , an open-source program that can compute wave paths, and visualize them, at the same time. Peter, who had experience in coding, helped Hector learn Matlab over the course of the summer. As for their experiences in natural disasters, Peter describes surfing in 12-foot foot hurricane swells – and getting dragged out to sea by the current. Fortunately, he was able to reach shoreline rocks and climb out. Hector describes his own sea-going scare when a sudden series of waves appeared and threatened to capsize his small boat. Waves can be scary -- but not as scary as tornados, they say!

In this special episode on NHERI's response to Hurricane Harvey, I talk with Dr. Brian Phillips from the University of Maryland who traveled with the NHERI team from the University of Florida (led by Dr. Forrest Masters and his colleagues) to deploy truck mounted sensor towers ahead of the storm. They were able to capture ground level wind speed measurements of the eye of the storm as it hit land in Rockport, Texas as a Category 4 hurricane. Their data and other reconnaissance data is available here: https://www.designsafe-ci.org/rapid/

Today on this special episode as Hurricane Irma comes closer, we talk with Tom Iovino, Public Information Director at Florida Department of Health in Manatee County about hurricane preparedness, where to find quality information, and the latest on Irma as the storm approaches. You can find his recommendations for information below: National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/#Irma Florida Emergency Management: http://www.floridadisaster.org/Preparedness/

Profile of Elaina Sutley(https://ceae.ku.edu/elaina-j-sutley), structural engineer and assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Kansas. In her research, she focuses on multiple aspects of designing hazard-proof wood structures, including seismic safety in low-income housing. Sutley relates her “origin story” about becoming a structural engineer — with a public policy bent. She relates the influence of the noted wood-frame researcher John van de Lindt, the principal investigator on the NEESwood (https://www.nsf.gov/news/newsmedia/neeswood/resources3.jsp) project, a watershed study that demonstrated the resilience of tall, wood-framed structures (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoXl6-8UUrM). Studying under van de Lindt at the University of Alabama inspired Sutley to enter the field of hazard engineering. (van de Lindt now teaches at Colorado State University: http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~jwv) Sutley discusses current topics in wood-frame research: rocking wall panels, light frames, CLT (cross-laminated timber), and seismic retrofitting of “soft story” buildings. Although wood is a strong and sustainable construction material, she says architects and construction companies often do not understand the benefits of wood construction. Researchers in her field like to say the biggest challenges to wood-frame construction are “fire, water, and ignorance.” As an early career faculty member, Sutley is eager to get involved in the NHERI community. She attended NHERI’s inaugural Summer Institute program (https://www.designsafe-ci.org/community/news/2017/nheri-summer-institute) in San Antonio this summer. She also is a member of the NHERI User Forum (https://www.designsafe-ci.org/facilities/nco/governance/user-forum), which helps ensure engineering researchers are able to find the resources they need from NHERI’s experimental facilities. Sutley also is active in the ASCE community and is chair of wood structures division. Lastly, Sutley relates a dramatic story of getting caught in tornado. Be sure to tune in!

On this special episode covering Hurricane Harvey and the NHERI network's commitment to science during this extreme event, host Dan Zehner talks with Dr. Clint Dawson of the University of Texas at Austin about his team's work in storm surge forecast modelling over his career. They have developed one of only two high fidelity models of coastal storm surge that experts use for forecasting and local officials rely upon for their disaster response. You can find out more about Dr. Dawson's work and the most up to date storm surge forecast for Hurricane Harvey here: http://chg.ices.utexas.edu/

In this episode, host Dan Zehner talks with UC San Diego’s Darren McKay, development engineer and operations manager for LHPOST, the world’s largest outdoor shake table. The shake table, part of the UCSD Jacobs School of Civil Engineering, is one of NHERI’s 8 experimental facilities. At McKay’s site, researchers “build big.” They construct full-scale and near-full scale structures, often multiple-story buildings, to test designs for seismic reliability. McKay introduces three engineering students who did summer research at the facility as part of NHERI’s research experiences for undergraduates program. The REU students relate their experiences doing hands-on things like setting up instrumentation, applying sensors and analyzing data -- and using construction power tools for the first time. A little scary! And find out what NOT to wear when spending the summer climbing in and around a large-scale test structure. Also, learn why safety is a top priority at the facility, when McKay tells anecdotes about engineers don’t follow safety protocols. Feeling goulish, host Dan Zehner asks everyone to tell their favorite natural disaster story – including the one about a plane-ride through a typhoon. Lastly, find out about the engineering research capabilities of the LHPOST shake table, where multi-university research projects are the order of the day – even if the schools are football rivals like Oregon State and the University of Washington.

Get ready for Hurricane Harvey! If you aren't prepared already, get that way and get safe. Here are some last minute preparations you can do, good sources of information, and how you can help those who are in the path. Hurricane kit: Medication Cash Battery powered radio First aid supplies Bottled water Flashlight Cell phone car charger Credible info sources: National Weather Service: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/#Harvey NOAA: http://www.noaa.gov/ Weather Channel: https://weather.com/storms/hurricane How you can help: Donate to the American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/ Reach out to friends and neighbors!

Today I talked with Dr. Arindham Chowdhury and Dr. Maryam Refan from the Wall of Wind at Florida International University. Dr. Refan shared some great stories from her research career including how her storm chasing truck got hit with a piece of a wind turbine, creating a tornado in a laboratory setting, and how wind engineering research can focus on using wind to generate energy or prevent damage to structures. I talked to Dr. Chowdhury about how the Wall of Wind got started, the current research taking place, and some of the great innovations that have come out of there including AMPS (http://bit.ly/2vM9LY6). For more information on the Wall of Wind, here's an overview video from their YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/2wds4bN

Here's the full version of my interview with Dr. Pedro Lomonaco from Oregon State University's O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Lab! We went into a few more topics than we could fit into one episode on the full length version of this.

On today's episode, I talked with Dr. Pedro Lomonaco from Oregon State University about coastal engineering and his work at the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. He has a wealth of experience in this area and loves to talk about it! In fact, we had more to talk about than could fit in an episode, so the full interview will be published separately.

Dr. Julio Ramirez talks about how he got interested in Civil Engineering as a boy following his dad to job sites in Mexico, and has turned that into a career dedicated to designing resilient structures. We talk about the amazing facilities that make up the NHERI network and how the team is bringing together the earthquake, geotechnical, wind, and coastal engineering communities to do multi-hazard research. At the end of the interview he shares a great personal experience with a reconnaissance mission in Columbia.