2018 Chapter Meeting
Lecture Meeting
Lecture Title: “Life Safety in the City, There is More to Life Than Not Being Crushed”
Speaker: 2017 EERI Distinguished Lecturer Lucy Jones, PhD (M. EERI, 2001)
Date: Thursday May 10, 2018
Time: 5:30– 7:00 PM
Location: AIR Worldwide, 131 Dartmouth St, Boston, MA 02116
Attendance Limited, For RSVP email ekianirad@air‐worldwide.com
Abstract: The Resilience by Design program adopted by Los Angeles to address earthquake vulnerabilities brought together the earth science, earthquake engineering and public policy professions and worked with hundreds of community organizations to get approval for sweeping seismic resilience legislation. The process elucidated the disconnect between what well-informed members of the community and local governments understand about the earthquake risk and the goals and objectives of mitigation measures like building codes, and what has been implemented in most communities. Since their inception, building codes have been based on a principle that safety is the only valid concern of government. If an owner chooses to build a building that is a total financial loss, that is his prerogative but he cannot kill someone in the process. A key factor is that building codes consider buildings in isolation with impacts only on their owners and tenants. But the reality of a major earthquake is that the failure of a building impacts the whole community through economic disruption, population decreases, and cascading failures of engineered and social systems. This talk will explore a conceptual framework for creating a building code that reflects the realities of earthquake losses and the social dynamics of shared economic decisions.
2017 Chapter Meeting
Lecture Meeting
Lecture Title: “Seismic Hazard Assessment and Monitoring of Tall Buildings”
Speaker: Nafi Tokzos, Professor, MIT
Date: Friday May 12th, 2017
Time: 3:00 to 4:30 pm
Location: MIT Green Building(#54); 2nd Floor; Room 54-209