Preface

The Eighth US-Japan Workshop was a forum for U.S. and Japanese colleagues to share their ideas about earthquake damage to lifelines and explore advanced technologies for characterizing liquefaction, mitigating risk to hazardous sites, and improving post earthquake response and recovery. The Eighth US-Japan Workshop was held at the conclusion of the U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research Program on Urban Earthquake Disaster Mitigation. This program was launched by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge and 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu (Kobe) earthquakes. The researchers, who organized this workshop, were supported by the U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research Program on Urban Earthquake Disaster Mitigation, and acknowledge the support received from and accomplishments achieved by this collaboration. The Eighth US-Japan Workshop provided an opportunity to discuss the construction of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), and allowed U.S. and Japanese colleagues to exchange information and ideas for future collaboration within the novel frame-work of NEES. It is our hope that the research results in these proceedings will be applied in engineering decisions and that the workshop will act as a catalyst in promoting the transfer of technology from theory to practice.

J.P. Bardet

Professor, University of Southern California

M. Hamada

Professor, Waseda University

T.D. O’Rourke

Professor, Cornell University