Hands-On Workshop for Impactful
Geotechnical Extreme Event
Reconnaissance: March 25, 8:00am – 5:00pm
Cohen Multipurpose Room (Engineering VI 134), UCLA Campus
REGISTER HERE
Instructors
David Frost – Georgia Institute of Technology
Michael Gardner – University of Nevada, Reno
Youssef Hashash – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Joseph Wartman – University of Washington
Dimitrios Zekkos – University of California, Berkeley
The National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association (GEER) and the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) RAPID Facility collaborate to investigate and collect field data on the geotechnical aspects of extreme events, such as earthquakes, storms, floods, landslides, and wildfire. This short course seeks to advance post-event reconnaissance practices, improve the overall quality of the data collection effort, and provide hands-on training on geotechnical engineeringfocused field instrumentation, including terrestrial laser scanners and seismometers.
Course Topics
• Introduction to GEER
• Lessons learned from previous post extreme-event reconnaissance
• Illustrative cases of past GEER efforts
• Overview of the NSF RAPID facility
• Hands-on demonstration and use of RAPID facility equipment
• Field exercise simulating post extreme-event reconnaissance data collection
Registration for ASCE GeoCongress is not required to attend this event. Attendance for this event is free.
Program
1) Coffee and bagels (8 – 8:30 am)
2) Welcoming remarks (8:30 – 8:40 am)
a. Summary of workshop objectives and agenda
3) Introduction to GEER (8:40 – 9:55 am)
a. Importance of post extreme-event reconnaissance
b. Organization, coordination, communication, and safety of reconnaissance teams
c. Geotechnical aspects of post extreme-event reconnaissance
4) 15 min morning break
5) Lessons learned from previous post extreme-event reconnaissance (10:10-11:10 am)
a. Pre- and post-reconnaissance
b. Importance of modern tools
6) Illustrative cases of past GEER efforts (11:10 – 12:20 pm)
a. 2021 Western European Flooding
b. 2018 Palu Flow Slide
c. 2023 Turkey/Syria Earthquake
7) Lunch break (12:20 – 1:30 pm)
a. Bring your own lunch
8) Overview of the NSF RAPID facility (1:30 – 2:20 pm)
a. Facility mission and role with GEER
b. How to access and use the RAPID facility
c. Overview of instrumentation available
9) Hands-on demonstration (2:20 – 3:00 pm)
a. Nanometrics Trillium Compact Seismometers
b. Leica RTC 360 3D Laser Scanner
c. Rapp RAPID facility mobile data collection app
10) Field exercise simulating post extreme-event reconnaissance data collection (3:00 – 5:00 pm)
a. Methods for recording damage (deployment, uploading to DesignSafe, use of HazMapper)
b. Data integration and reporting (report/synthesis)
SPEAKER BIOS
David Frost – Georgia Institute of Technology
David Frost is the Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor of Civil Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is Chair of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association. Prior to becoming a faculty member, he worked in industry in Ireland and Canada on a range of natural resource related projects including tailings impoundments and artificial sand islands in the Arctic for oil exploration. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Canada and the US and a Fellow of ASCE. His research focuses on the development of digital data collection systems for studying infrastructure problems related to extreme events and he has received two US patents for multi-sensor systems. He has served on NSF supported post-disaster study teams in US, Turkey, India, China, Chile and Japan as well as at the World Trade Center following the 9/11 attacks. He also co-founded a software company that focuses on field data collection technologies.
Michael Gardner – University of Nevada, Reno
Michael Gardner is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, in the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering. He received his BS in Civil Engineering and his MS and PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to pursuing his graduate studies, he worked as a geotechnical engineer in San Francisco and prior to attending university he served in the US Army as a combat engineer. His professional and research interests include geological engineering, rock mechanics, natural hazards engineering, and the application of numerical and stochastic methods to shallow earth processes and engineering analysis. Michael has participated in several reconnaissance missions, including the 2014 Napa Earthquake, 2021 Western European flood, and 2022 Yellowstone River flood.
Youssef Hashash – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Professor Youssef Hashash holds a B.S. (1987), an M.S. (1988) and a Ph.D. (1992) in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his career with the PB/MK TEAM in Dallas on the Superconducting Super Collider Project. In 1994 he joined Parsons Brinckerhoff in San Francisco and worked on a number of underground construction projects in the U.S. and Canada including the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel project. His research focus includes deep excavations and tunneling in urban areas, earthquake engineering, continuum and discrete element modeling and soil-structure interaction as well as resiliency and sustainability of the built infrastructure. He also works on geotechnical engineering applications of deep learning, artificial intelligence, visualization, augmented reality, imaging and drone technologies. His research group developed the software program DEEPSOIL that is used worldwide for evaluation of soil response to earthquake shaking. He is the geotechnical co-leader of the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) led investigation into the Champlain Towers South Collapse in Surfside, Florida. Professor Hashash is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a past president of the Geo-institute of ASCE and has received a number of teaching, university and professional awards including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the ASCE 2014 Peck medal. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022.
Joseph Wartman – University of Washington
Joe Wartman directs the Natural Hazard and Disaster Reconnaissance (RAPID) Facility, headquartered at the University of Washington (UW), where he is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He specializes in geological hazards with a specific interest in landslides and their impacts on communities. Over the past two decades, he has investigated and analyzed major geologic hazard events worldwide, including earthquakes, hurricanes, and landslides. Wartman’s research appears in such journals as the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, Engineering Geology, Geomorphology, GeoHealth, Scientific Advances, and the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, among others. In addition to his scientific publications, Dr. Wartman’s prize-winning non-technical writing on disasters has appeared in the New York Times, the Seattle Times, EOS, and other venues.
Dimitrios Zekkos – University of California, Berkeley
Dimitrios Zekkos, Ph.D, P.E., is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Dimitrios is applying multi-sensing approaches enabled by satellites, robots (aerial and landbased) and on-the-ground deployments to collect data and model the performance of infrastructure systems in response to a range of natural hazards, including earthquakes, monsoons, hurricanes as well as climate change. Dimitrios has led GEER deployments such as the Cephalonia 2014 earthquake doublet, and the 2020 Medicane Ianos, and has participated in a number of reconnaissance missions such as the 2011 Tohoku (Japan) earthquake, the 2015 Gorkha (Nepal) earthquake and subsequent monsoons, the 2015 Lefkada earthquake and the 2016 Kaikoura (New Zealand) earthquake. Dimitrios is also the founder of ARGO-E, an infrastructure analytics firm. More information about Dimitrios, including publications, can be reached at: http://www.dimitrioszekkos.org
