Scott M. Olson
“I'll be traveling to Haiti as part of a Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) team,” Olson explained. “The GEER association is funded through the National Science Foundation and the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP)."
As seen in the media reports, most buildings in the earthquake zone crumbled within a few seconds, primarily due to poor foundations. To develop safer, future engineering design procedures, the seven-person team will spend an intensive week documenting the effects of the Magnitude 7.0 earthquake.
“Specifically, we'll be looking at damage related to fault displacement, liquefaction, landslides, and other ground failures," Olson said. "These failures can involve port structures (as was the case in Port au Prince), buildings and their foundations, levees, embankments and dams, slopes, storage tanks, tunnels, and other geostructures. Olson's own research interests include: liquefaction of level and sloping ground, paleoseismology and paleoliquefaction, soft ground engineering, in situ testing, geosynthetics, and instrumentation.
From available aerial photography, the team has identified a significant number of landslides and failures related to liquefaction. For example, the tremendous damage at the port was related in part to liquefaction of the reclaimed land used to construct the port facilities. Understanding these failures will help us to develop engineering procedures and designed intended to prevent (or at least reduce) infrastructure damage and loss of life during future events.
"The hope for me is to bring a lot of these problems to light a little more and illustrate some of the simpler ways that we can use engineering and knowledge that we gain from these sorts of investigations to improve the structures and to improve their homes in very cost effective and cheaper ways," he added.
Led by Dr. Ellen Rathje, a civil engineering professor at The University of Texas at Austin, the survey team also includes Jeff Bachhuber of Fugro/William Lettis and Associates, Dr. Brady Cox of the University of Arkansas, Jim French of AMEC/Geomatrix, Dr. Russell Green of Virginia Technical Institute, Dr. Glenn Rix of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Oscar Suncar of The University of Texas at Austin, and Donald Wells of AMEC/Geomatrix.
They will work with teams organized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, U.S. Geological Survey, American Society of Civil Engineers Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, and others.
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Contact: Scott Olson, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 217/265-7584.
Becky Rische, Engineering Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, 512/471 7272.
Ellen Rathje, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 512/232-3683.
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, writer/editor.