LFE as a development tool for next generation earthquake professionals

In January 2017 the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute in partnership with the National Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (CIGIDEN) led a five-day travel study program in Chile in which students and young professionals engaged in learning from earthquakes activities. The 16 participants attended lectures and field trips and completed two resilience projects to contribute to the body of knowledge about recovery since the 2010 Maule earthquake while also becoming familiar with reconnaissance tools and techniques. The program was created to provide learning-from-earthquakes opportunities for younger members outside the limited postevent reconnaissance teams; and to engage younger members in EERI activities and train them for future reconnaissance, which might include long-term resilience and recovery components. The success of the program can be attributed to the strong partnership with CIGIDEN, experienced mentors who accompanied the group, senior academics and practitioners who lectured and led tours, as well as a strong interdisciplinary team of participants who worked extremely hard interviewing locals and compiling the data for their resilience project

A Seismic Performance Classification Framework to Provide Increased Seismic Resilience

Several performance measures are being used in modern seismic engineering applications, suggesting that seismic performance could be classified a number of ways. This paper reviews a range of performance measures currently being adopted and then proposes a new seismic performance classification framework based on expected annual losses (EAL). The motivation for an EAL-based performance framework stems from the observation that, in addition to limiting lives lost during earthquakes, changes are needed to improve the resilience of our societies, and it is proposed that increased resilience in developed countries could be achieved by limiting monetary losses. In order to set suitable preliminary values of EAL for performance classification, values of EAL reported in the literature are reviewed. Uncertainties in current EAL estimates are discussed and then an EAL-based seismic performance classification framework is proposed. The proposal is made that the EAL should be computed on a storey-by-storey basis in recognition that EAL for different storeys of a building could vary significantly and also recognizing that a single building may have multiple owners

Housing recovery lessons from Chile

Problem, research strategy and findings: The 8.8 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck south-central Chile on February 27, 2010, affected 75% of the country's population and damaged or destroyed 370,000 housing units (about 10% of the housing in six regions). Within six months, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development published a plan to repair or rebuild 220,000 units of low- and middle-income housing with government assistance within four years. By February 2014, 94% of the housing was complete. The successful rebuilding effort had strong leadership at the national and local levels and used existing programs and institutions. The management staff adapted programs over time to meet the needs of local conditions. When compared with housing recovery programs in other countries, Chile's program stands out, combining national government management with local citizen input. The reconstruction plan also included updated zoning plans, road and infrastructure improvements, heritage recovery, and new master plans for affected cities. Going forward, the earthquake created an opportunity for Chile to use the recovery planning to expand national urban policy and to develop a framework for citizen participation at the local level.Takeaway for practice: Successful planning in disaster recovery involves strong government leadership and coordination together with the engagement of local government and the participation of citizens

Subunit structure and activity of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase from spinach chloroplasts.

Glyceraldehyde-phosphate dehydrogenase (D-glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate : NADP+ oxidoreductase (phosphorylating), EC 1.2.1.13) from spinach chloroplasts is a polymeric protein of approx. 600,000 daltons and sodium dodecyl sulphate gel electrophoresis shows that it consists of two subunits of molecular weight 43,000 and 37,000. Comparison of amino acid analyses and tryptic peptide maps indicates that the two subunits have a different primary structure. The native enzyme contains 0.5 mol of NADP+ and 0.5 mol of NAD+ per protomer of 80,000 daltons, no reduced pyridine nucleotides have been detected. Almost complete inactivation is obtained by reaction of two cysteinyl residues per 80,000 daltons with tetrathionate or iodo[14C2]acetic acid; since the same amount of radioactivity is incorporated in the two subunits it is likely that they are both essential for the catalytic activity. Charcoal stripping of native glyceraldehyde-phosphate dehydrogenase produces an apoprotein which still retains most of the enzymatic activity but, unlike the holoenzyme, is gradually inactivated by storage at 4 degrees C and does not react with iodoacetate under the same conditions in which the holoenzyme is completely inactivated

Making the Unfamiliar Familiar: Research Journeys Towards Understanding Migration and Place

Understanding the ways people respond to place in an inter-cultural context is a rich and rewarding process. The knowledge-discovery journey can involve different modes of transport and multiple and various routes. The qualitative vehicle, although soft in its steering and often circular in direction, provides opportunities to explore landscapes that one rarely sees in single-trajectory intellectual travel. Using hermeneutics and phenomenology, with a particular focus on metaphors and tropes, a number of conceptual journeys related to researching the experience of migration are described. The difficult state of being 'between place' and how this becomes manifest in real places is explored. The journeys show that only by travelling circuitously can one arrive at a multi-faceted form of awareness of the experience of migration and place