Villanova Engineer - Fall 2019

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MINING FOR LESSONS IN NATURAL DISASTERS

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n July, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Jonathan Hubler, PhD, spent a week training on reconnaissance tools at the National Hazards Reconnaissance (RAPID) Facility (see “Earthquake Engineer at the Ready” in UP&COMING, page 5). As chance would have it, RAPID’s founder and director— Joseph Wartman, PhD, ’90 CE—is a Villanova Engineering graduate, attended the same grammar school as Dr. Hubler (a couple decades apart), and is a fellow geotechnical engineer. After earning his master’s and PhD from the University of California, Berkley, Dr. Wartman spent nearly 10 years at Drexel University, where he was a founding co-director of the Drexel Engineering Cities Initiative. In 2010, he arrived at the University of Washington, where today he is the H.R. Berg Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. An expert in earthquake engineering, engineering geology, sustainable geotechnics and natural hazards, Dr. Wartman is a former editor of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, and the author of more than 100 professional articles, as well as essays and op-eds that have appeared in The New York Times, Seattle Times, the Conversation.com, and elsewhere. His biggest claim to fame, however, may be his work as the founder and director of RAPID. He says, “I credit Villanova University with providing me with the liberal arts engineering background required to blend elements of engineering and social science into this equipment facility.” Headquartered at the University of Washington, RAPID is a collaboration between UW, Oregon State University, Virginia Tech and the University of Florida. The facility enables the natural hazards and disaster research communities to conduct next-generation rapid response investigations to characterize civil infrastructure performance and community response to natural hazards, evaluate the effectiveness of design methodologies, calibrate simulation models, and develop solutions for resilient communities. The work has taken the RAPID

team on reconnaissance missions to New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, California, North Carolina, Florida, Alaska, Oregon and elsewhere. In recognition of his work, Dr. Wartman has earned several awards and honors including the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award, the John J. Gallen Memorial Award from Villanova’s College of Engineering Alumni Society, and the Geotechnical Engineer of the Year award from the Philadelphia section of ASCE. He was selected for the US National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering program in 2011, and received the Shamsher Prakash Foundation Research Award, New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering’s Commendation Award and Geological Society of America’s Burwell Award in Geologic Engineering. Today, Dr. Wartman is involved in several international collaborations to examine natural hazard risks posed to refugees in conflict zones and to other populations facing humanitarian crises. He has led and participated in major investigations of natural disasters in North and South America, Asia, and Oceania over the past two decades. His current work involves developing low-cost, high-resolution tools for identifying and mapping geologic hazards. Dr. Wartman notes: “In the past decade, natural disasters have impacted, on average, close to 300 million people each year worldwide, claiming over 75,000 lives annually. The RAPID Facility helps researchers and practitioners learn key lessons from disasters, and use this knowledge to enhance community resilience— and ultimately, to prevent natural hazards from becoming catastrophes.”


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