Workshop Summary

The workshop on Mitigation of Earthquake Disaster by Advanced Technologies (MEDAT), was held under the sponsorship of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Holiday Inn Emerald Springs on November 30^th (Thursday) and December 1^st (Friday), 2000. This workshop (MEDAT-2) consisted of all plenary two-day sessions and is the second in a new series of MCEER-sponsored workshops involving advanced technologies.

The workshop gathered a small select multidisciplinary group of approximately 35 experts (earthquake engineers and researchers from other fields of advanced technology, see participants list) to exchange and explore how innovative applications of advanced technologies (non-destructive inspection, health monitoring advanced materials, innovative devices, etc.) could be used for the purpose of earthquake disaster mitigation. More specifically, it explored the state-of-the-art and state-of-practice in the use of advanced technologies for the seismic evaluation and retrofit of health care facilities with a particular emphasis on material and technologies that would be useful to mitigate the risk of:

1. Soil liquefaction
2. Structural damage
3. Non-structural damage

To address these topics, separate technical blocks were scheduled and structured as follows:

Focus	Technologies currently researched by MCEER	Other Advanced Technologies
Overview	(1)	(4)
Examples	(2)	(3)
Panel Discussion	(5)
Summary Session and Recommendations	(6)

For each technical block, the numeral above corresponds to (in order of presentation):

1. An overview presentation of what are the desirable seismic performance objectives of hospitals and the retrofit strategies currently investigated by MCEER.
2. A few presentations illustrating examples of research projects conducted within that framework.
3. A few presentations illustrating examples of technologies that are could meet the criteria stated in (1) and how they are used in other (i.e. non-earthquake engineering) applications.
4. A broader overview of state-of-the-art in various technologies that could also be applied to the earthquake engineering problem at hand, with or without further developments.
5. A panel session for the researchers assigned to one of the three specified topics, to discuss how new technologies could be implemented, and (if possible) elaborate research strategies for this implementation. Panel members were asked to prepare one question that will be used to stimulate the discussion.
6. A summary session to report findings and recommendations reached during the workshop for each technical block.