U.S.-Japan Collaborative Project on Post-Earthquake Reconstruction Strategies

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9512844 Lee This is a three-year continuing award supporting a collaboration between engineering research centers in the United States and Japan. The U.S. principal investigator is Professor George C. Lee, Director of the National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (NCEER), State University of New York, Buffalo. This award is jointly funded by the Japan Program of the Division of International Programs and the Earthquake Hazard Mitigation Program, Division of Civil and Mechanical Structures, Directorate for Engineering. During the course of this cooperative project, the investigators in NCEER will work with researchers in the International Center for Disaster Mitigation Engineering (INCEDE), University of Tokyo, led by its Director, Professor Tsuneo Katayama. They will attempt to identify exemplary strateeies for post-earthquake reconstruction and recovery that have potential cross-societal applicability through coordinated and cooperative case studies in the United States and Japan. The devastating events in Northridge, California in 1994 and in Kobe, Japan in 1995 have shown that dense population centers are very vulnerable to major earthquakes. These events further show that earthquake mitigation research efforts to improve design and construction methods and emergency response policies and procedures can substantially reduce the loss of life and damage to buildings and lifelines. By convening a multidisciplinary team of engineers and social scientists to address these issues, this U.S.-Japan project will build upon the "systems integrated" approach in earthquake hazard mitigation research implementation that has been the underlying theme of the NCEER since 1986. For the most part, this grant supports research visits in Japan by U.S. senior investigators, postdoctoral researcheps, and graduate students. Scientists from several universities and research institutes are involved in the work of both centers, NCEER and INCEDE, thus giving a national character to the cooperative work. ***