A recent study concluded that three of four recently constructed segments of a new port facility in Anchorage, Alaska were not constructed correctly and even if they were, are vulnerable to liquefaction related damage during […]
On 22 October, 2012, an Italian court convicted six internationally respected scientists of manslaughter. The scientists Enzo Boschi, Giulio Selvaggi, Franco Barberi, Claudio Eva, Mauro Dolce, and Gian Michele Calvi have been sentenced to prison terms, barred from public office, and ordered to pay court costs and damages.
Their offense could have been avoided by precisely predicting the timing and nature of the tragic 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila. However, such precise, short-term earthquake prediction of the type evidently sought by L’Aquila is currently impossible. Because of the ungainly complexity of earthquake systems, knowledge of physical details is incomplete; the diverse expressions of earthquake processes deliver contradictory messages; and measurements of earthquake phenomena can be inaccurate. Glaringly, the indictment accused the scientists of having provided “incomplete”, “contradictory”, and “inaccurate” information.
[Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release from the GSA. [/Editor]
In a ruling that has rocked the geophysical community, six Italian scientists and one government official have been sentenced to 6 years in prison for failing to give adequate warning of a 2009 earthquake that […]
To keep the loose soils beneath a planned hospital from liquefying and damaging the foundations during the design earthquake, Hayward Baker stabilized the site by performing wet soil mixing. In addition, HB installed tie down […]
A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck Italy on Sunday, killing several and leaving an estimated 3,000 people homeless. A number of renaissance era buildings were damaged or destroyed in a region known for it’s production of […]
The Christ Church City Council has issued a notice banning entry to over 500 homes because of risks associated with rockfall, landslides, cliff collapse and other geotechnical problems exacerbated by recent earthquakes. [Source: Scoop News]
This article notes that the combination of shallow water table and crummy soils make it difficult to rebuild safely in the Christchurch, New Zealand business district. Another interesting item mentioned in the article is that […]
The NSF funded Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) team has provided a preliminary report and some amazing photos and video of the damage to various regions of Japan affected by the moment magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck on March 11, 2011. Read on to see some amazing photos and video of the liquefaction damage related to the Tohoku Earthquake in Japan. (Photos from Oregon State Flickr)
"I’m a member of an organization, the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Organization," said U.C. Davis Professor Ross Boulanger, Ph.D. Boulanger recently led a team of researchers in Japan, looking at how the dramatic earthquake […]
With the events in Japan on everyone’s mind, it’s of course to be expected that seismic safety at nuclear power plants in the U.S. becomes a hot topic. This article discusses how the Nuclear Regulatory […]
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