POST EARTHQUAKE FIELD INVESTIGATION OF THE M8.0 SAMOA ISLANDS EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI OF SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

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The UK Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) has decided to mount a reconnaissance mission to the Samoa Islands region following the earthquake of magnitude 8.0MW, which occurred on the 29th September 2009 and subsequent tsunami. A team of six people, (coastal and earthquake engineers), are planning to leave for Apia, Samoa on the 3rd November 2009 and spend 6 days in the disaster zone to conduct a technical evaluation of the earthquake and tsunami and carry out an assessment of the effectiveness of protection measures by surveying the damage and interviewing local government officials and survivors of the event. The four academic members of the team comprise the PI (Dr Alison Hunt-Raby, a Lecturer and coastal engineer from the University of Plymouth), the team leader (Dr Emily So, a Chartered Civil Engineer who will be employed as a researcher at the University of Plymouth) and two researchers from University College London (Tristan Robinson, a Teaching Fellow and Tristan Lloyd, a PhD student, both tsunami specialists). The further team members are practicing engineers with expertise in seismology, tsunami modelling and geotechnical engineering.This application seeks financial support to help meet the travel costs of the participating academic team members and to aid EEFIT support entry of collected field data (photographs and observations) into an improved version of the Virtual Disaster Viewer system developed following the EPSRC funded China Earthquake mission in 2008 (Grant Ref: EP/G030111/1). This platform will allow members of the global earthquake engineering community, especially to review and provide their assessment of damage by comparing before and after satellite images of the affected areas and to remotely and in real-time upload their own field data as it is collected for rapid dissemination. Dissemination through the improved Virtual Disaster Viewer system will increase the effectiveness of earthquake reporting, promoting awareness of earthquake risk. It will also be a shared repository for observations made by several international teams of experts. Hence, this initiative will continue to strengthen existing, and foster new relationships between researchers and engineers in EEFIT and the worldwide earthquake engineering community.