Home
Aims & Scope
Editorial Board
Contents & Abstracts
Submitting Your Paper
Copyright & Permissions
Subscriptions and Orders

Field reconnaissance of the 2007 Niigata-Chuetsu Oki earthquake

Georgios Apostolakis, Bing Qu, Nurhan Ecemis and Seda Dogruel

Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA

Abstract: As part of the 2007 Tri-Center Field Mission to Japan, a reconnaissance team comprised of fourteen graduate students and three faculty members from three U.S. earthquake engineering research centers, namely, Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), Mid-America Earthquake Center (MAE), and Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), undertook a reconnaissance visit to the affected area shortly after the 2007 Niigata-Chuetsu Oki earthquake. This mission provided an opportunity to review the nature of the earthquake damage that occurred, as well as to assess the significance of the damage from an educational perspective. This paper reports on the seismological characteristics of the earthquake, preliminary findings of geotechnical and structural damage, and the causes of the observed failures or collapses. In addition, economic and socio-economic considerations and experiences to enhance earthquake resilience are presented.

Keywords: Niigata; earthquake; reconnaissance; structural damage; geotechnical damage

Copyright© 2009 IEM. Journal of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Vibration. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as described below, without written permission from the Publisher. Copying of articles is not permitted except for personal and internal use, to the extent permitted by national copyright law, or under the terms of a license issued by the National Reproduction Rights Organization of China.