POST EARTHQUAKE FIELD INVESTIGATION OF THE M7.9 EASTERN SICHUAN, CHINA EARTHQUAKE OF MAY 12, 2008, AND DEVELOPMENT OF VIRTUAL DISASTER VIEWER

英国地震工程实地考察队在2008年5月12日发生7.9兆瓦地震后，决定前往四川东部的中国进行勘察任务。由地震工程、岩土工程和地震专家组成的9人小组计划于2008年7月11日前往成都，中国将在灾区停留7天。虽然事件已经过去了两个月，但国际工程界几乎没有得到关于所受损害的程度和类型的信息。这促使全球地震工程界研究利用新技术远程获取破坏信息的可行性。这项赠款申请寻求财政支持，以帮助支付参与的学术团队成员的旅费，并帮助EEFIT支持一项新的国际合作，以建立一个将作为社交网络工具的门户网站(虚拟灾难观察者)，全球地震工程界的成员，特别是那些属于EEFIT(英国)、地震工程研究所(EERI，美国)和多学科地震工程研究中心(MCEER，美国)的成员，可以通过比较受灾地区卫星图像前后的情况来审查和提供他们的损失评估。这一努力的结果将使社区在缺乏信息和难以获得信息的情况下对区域损害进行评估。它将作为使用遥感技术作为影响评估/破坏观测方案的一次重要测试，结果将完全可见并向公众开放，促进对地震风险的认识和英国地震工程界开展的研究。EEFIT、MCEER和EERI(英国和美国最大和最活跃的地震勘察组织)的成员之间从未进行过这样的联合勘察和研究工作，因此这一倡议将加强现有的，并促进属于EEFIT、EERI和MCEER的研究人员和工程师之间的新关系。

The UK Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) has decided to mount a reconnaissance mission to Eastern Sichuan, China following the earthquake of magnitude 7.9 MW, which occurred on the 12th May 2008. A team of nine people, (earthquake engineering, geotechnics and seismology experts), are planning to leave for Chengdu, China on 11th July 2008 and spend seven days in the disaster zone. Although two months have passed from the event, very little information has been made available to the International engineering community regarding the extent and type of damage incurred. This has spurred the worldwide earthquake engineering community to look into the feasibility of using new technologies to obtain damage information remotely. This grant application seeks financial support to help meet the travel costs of the participating academic team members and to aid EEFIT support a new International collaboration to set up a web portal (the Virtual Disaster Viewer ) that will function as a social networking tool , where members of the global earthquake engineering community, especially those belonging to EEFIT (UK), Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI, US) and Multidisciplinary Centre for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER, US), can review and provide their assessment of damage by comparing before and after satellite images of the affected areas. The outcomes of this effort will give the community an assessment of regional damage in an event where little information is available and access difficult. It will serve as an important test for using remote sensing technologies as an impact assessment/damage observation protocol, and the results will be fully viewable and available to the public, promoting awareness of earthquake risk and of research carried out by the UK earthquake engineering community. No such joint reconnaissance and research effort has ever been undertaken between members of EEFIT, MCEER and EERI (the largest and most active earthquake reconnaissance groups in the UK and US) hence this initiative will strengthen existing, and foster new relationships between researchers and engineers belonging to EEFIT, EERI and MCEER.