Nearly 500 Attend Fifth National Seismic Conference
Keynote Speaker Rick Land of Caltrans discussed Seismic Safety -- Challenges and Opportunities during the Monday plenary session.
Nearly 500 bridge engineers and other transportation professionals from eleven different countries and thirty six states attended the Fifth National Seismic Conference on Bridges and Highways, held September 18-20, 2006 in San Francisco, California. The biennial conference was organized by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the Transportation Research Board and MCEER. Myint Lwin, Director, Office of Bridge Technology, FHWA and Rick Land, Chief Engineer, Caltrans, were honorary co-chairs.
Under the theme Innovations in Earthquake Engineering for Highway Structures, the
conference featured prominent international leaders in both academia and industry
as keynote speakers. Invited
speakers included Rick Land, Caltrans, Myint Lwin, FHWA, Kazuhiko Kawashima,
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Lichu Fan, Tongjii University (MCEER’s
George Lee gave his presentation), T.J. Zhu, Buckland and Taylor, Ltd., Lars
Hauge, COWI, K.C. Chang, National Taiwan University, Charles Seim, Consulting
Bridge Engineer, and Roy Imbsen,
Imbsen Consulting.
The conference program included over 60 technical papers and more than 20 posters on topics related to improving the seismic safety of the US highway system, including seismic risk assessment of highway networks, lessons learned form recent earthquakes, design and analysis of major bridges, foundations and geotechnical considerations, and several others. In addition, there was an open discussion panel on multiple hazard design, and a full-day Seismic Retrofit Workshop held the day before the conference began was well-attended.
Other program highlights included two best paper awards, given in memory of distinguished engineers James Cooper, a champion of seismic safety at FHWA, and James Roberts, who was with Caltrans for more than fifty years. Stephen Mahin, UC California, Berkeley and his co-authors received the James Cooper award for “Use of Partially Prestressed Reinforced Concrete Columns to Reduce Post Earthquake Residual Displacements of Bridges,” the paper judged to have the greatest potential impact, contribution to society and best overall quality. The James Roberts award, given for work containing a deployable research innovation expected to have a significant impact on the practice of the bridge engineering profession, went to Brian Chiou of Caltrans and his team for “An Overview of the Project of Next Generation of Ground Motion Attenuation Models for Shallow Crustal Earthquakes in Active Tectonic Regions.”
More than 20 companies (pdf) showcased their products and services in the exhibit area where conference breaks took place, and support from platinum-level sponsors, HNTB, Parsons Brinkerhoff, T.Y. Lin International, Washington Group International and the University Transportation Center at the University of Missouri-Rolla, helped make the conference enjoyable and technically comprehensive. A post-conference technical boat tour arranged by Caltrans took 100 participants to the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge project, which features a segmental concrete bridge and a self anchored suspension span, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Richmond - San Rafael Bridge, and the Carquinez Straits Bridge.
In his closing remarks, chair Phil Yen, FHWA, proposed that the sixth national conference be held in a seismic region of the US besides California, suggesting Chicago, Illinois, Buffalo, New York and Charleston, South Carolina as possible sites. Dr. Yen also hopes to encourage more international participation at future conferences.
Proceedings are available on CD.
