̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Emily So

Cambridge engineer to co-lead earthquake reconnaissance mission to Turkey

jek67 — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 15:21:39 +0000

Professor Emily So, Director of the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE) will be co-leading a UK team of engineers, seismologists and geologists on a reconnaissance mission to Turkey, to undertake post-earthquake assessments and uncover the causes of this natural disaster.

Organised by ̽��ֱ��Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), Professor So will co-lead the mission alongside Yasemin Didem Aktas from UCL and will work closely to support Turkish colleagues and officials. ̽��ֱ��EEFIT is a joint venture between industry and universities, conducting field investigations following major earthquakes.

̽��ֱ��earthquake struck south-eastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria on Monday 6 Feb, registering a 7.8 magnitude quake. It is Turkey's worst earthquake since 1939, impacting 13.4 million people living in the 10 provinces hit by it. At the time of writing, the death toll had climbed to more than 36,000, with the United Nations warning that the final number may double.

̽��ֱ��reconnaissance mission will carry out detailed technical evaluations of the performance of structures, foundations, civil engineering works and industrial plants within the affected regions. They will also assess the effectiveness of earthquake protection methods, study disaster management procedures and investigate the socio-economic effects of the earthquake.

Professor Emily So says: “Last week’s earthquake has caused untold damage and suffering for up to 15% of Turkey’s population. This mission will enable us to observe the damage and the effects of the earthquake first-hand to identify the main lessons that can be learnt. ̽��ֱ��EEFIT mission is our opportunity to observe the real performances of buildings and question why they have collapsed and why they have not withstood the earthquake. These lessons are key to help direct future research, and prioritise actions for change.”

Professor So is a chartered civil engineer and Director of the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE). Her main area of interest is in assessing and managing urban risk and resilience. She has actively engaged with earthquake‐affected communities in different parts of the world, focusing on applying her work towards making real‐ world improvements in seismic safety.

Saving lives from earthquakes is a priority and motivates her research. Her area of specialty is casualty estimation in earthquake loss modelling and her research has led to improved understanding of the relationship between deaths and injuries following earthquakes.

Recognised as an expert in the field, Professor So sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) providing valuable and timely scientific and technical advice to support the UK Government’s Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR).

Professor So is a Fellow and Admissions Tutor for Recruitment at Magdalene College, Director of Studies in Architecture at Magdalene and St Edmund’s College and a Director of Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd.

Professor Emily So will lead a UK response to uncover the causes of the extensive damage and loss of life

This mission will enable us to observe the damage and the effects of the earthquake first-hand to identify the main lessons that can be learnt...These will be key to help prioritise actions for change.”

Professor Emily So

@Turkey earthquake – a glimpse of the ECHO assessment" by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid

Turkey earthquake – a glimpse of the ECHO assessment

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Turkey-Syria earthquakes: deficiencies in building structures and construction shortcuts were main cause of casualties

jek67 — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 17:19:12 +0000

A new, independent field investigation into the aftermath of the Turkey-Syria earthquakes has found that a drive for profit has pushed all players within the construction industry to take shortcuts, with building stock primarily made of Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures, being the main cause of the casualties.

Findings show that deficiencies were also recorded among even the newest building stock. This is despite established technical know-how, state-of-the-art building codes and rigorous building regulations.

̽��ֱ��longitudinal study report published here today by the Institution of Structural Engineers for EEFIT, was co-led by Cambridge's Professor Emily So, Professor of Architectural Engineering and Director of the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE) and Dr Yasemin Didem Aktas from the Faculty of Engineering Sciences at UCL. Some of the findings include:

̽��ֱ��drive for profit pushes players within the construction industry to take shortcuts. ̽��ֱ��auditing and quality control mechanisms embedded in the legal and bureaucratic processes should be strengthened to ensure code compliance. ̽��ֱ��legalisation of non-compliant buildings through amnesties cannot continue.
Critically, despite established technical know-how, state-of-the-art building codes and rigorous building regulations, deficiencies in Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures were found even in the newest building stock. This demonstrates that seismic resilience is not only a technical problem in Turkey, but one that demands a multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary dialogue, scrutinising the regulatory system, bureaucracy, the legal and political backdrop within which the construction sector operates in Turkey.
Building stock is primarily composed of Reinforced Concrete structures, which were therefore the main cause of the casualties. ̽��ֱ��team saw problems with such structures across their whole lifecycle from design to implementation and post-occupancy stages. ̽��ֱ��structures therefore did not withstand the seismic pressures.
A review of building stock and infrastructure is critical to understand risk levels for future earthquakes. Lack of publicly available data is a big problem in Turkey, hindering not only a robust inquiry into damage and associated building characteristics, but also reliably establishing the risk profiles for future events.
Debris management and demolishment practices have not fully recognised the potential of mid-/long-term environmental and public health implications. Field observations and contacts in the affected communities show that they are already affected by the poor air quality. ̽��ֱ��Compulsory Earthquake Insurance (CEI) is a system that was put in place in Turkey following the 1999 earthquakes to provide monetary reserves to fund the management of future disasters. ̽��ֱ��extent to which these funds have been used and how resources have been allocated remain unclear.'

Read the full report and findings here.

Professor So says: “ ̽��ֱ��2023 Türkiye and Syria earthquakes were truly tragic, hitting an already fragile population, including migrants. Our field work and remote analysis revealed many issues, including the issue of non-compliant buildings with little seismic resilience. Building code compliance needs to be strengthened.”

EEFIT - a joint venture between industry and universities - gathered a team of 30 global experts to assess the damage and develop suggestions to reduce future impacts and vulnerabilities. They studied the science, engineering and data related to the earthquakes including geotechnics, the structural and infrastructure impact, and the relief response and recovery. ̽��ֱ��team continues to work in the area, to follow the recovery and collaborate with colleagues from Turkey for better seismic resilience.

̽��ֱ��Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), co-led by Professor Emily So, today publishes its findings and recommendations.

Our field work and remote analysis revealed many issues, including the issue of non-compliant buildings with little seismic resilience. Building code compliance needs to be strengthened.”

Professor Emily So

EEFIT

A partially-collapsed building in the aftermath of the Turkey-Syria earthquakes in 2023.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Cambridge researchers at the Hay Festival

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2023 08:43:07 +0000

Four Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� academics will speak at the Hay Festival 2023 as part of the Cambridge Series.

Waterworld: can we learn to live with flooding?

lw355 — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 09:52:17 +0000

In December 2015, Storm Desmond hit the north of the UK. In its wake came floods, the misery of muddy, polluted water surging through homes and the disruption of closed businesses, schools and roads.

Rapid urban growth and progressively unpredictable weather have focused attention on the resilience of cities worldwide not just to extreme events, but also to heavier-than-normal rainstorms, and raised questions as to how flood risk can be managed.

There is of course no ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy. For some areas, defence is a possibility. For others, retreat is the only option. “But for those unable to do either, we need to fundamentally rewrite the rule book on how we perceive water as a hazard to towns and cities,” says Ed Barsley, PhD student working with Dr Emily So in the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE). Barsley believes that adaptation and planning for resilience can provide a unique opportunity for increasing the quality of towns and cities (see panel).

Dr Dick Fenner from Cambridge's Department of Engineering agrees that resilience to water should be regarded positively. He is part of the UK-wide Blue–Green Cities project, which is developing strategies to manage urban flood risk in ways that also pay dividends in many other areas, through ‘greening’ the city. “We want to turn rainfall into a win-win-win event,” he says.

When it comes to dealing with floods, one of the major difficulties that many cities face is the impermeability of the built environment. In a city that is paved, concreted and asphalted, surface water can’t soak away quickly and naturally into the earth.

Newcastle city centre, for instance, is around 92% impermeable, and has suffered major flooding in the past. “ ̽��ֱ��‘flood footprint’ of the 2012 ‘Toon Monsoon’ caused around £129 million in direct damages and £102 million in indirect damages, rippling to economic sectors far beyond the physical location of the event,” says Fenner.

“Traditionally, cities have been built to capture water run-off in gutters and drains, to be piped away. But where is away? And how big would we have to build these pipes if the city can’t cope now?” he adds. ̽��ֱ��principal behind a ‘Blue–Green City’ is to create a more natural water cycle – one in which the city’s water management and its green infrastructure can be brought together.

Cities worldwide are already taking up the concept of ‘greening’, using permeable paving, bioswales (shallow ditches filled with vegetation), street planting, roof gardens and pocket parks. Green infrastructure benefits health and biodiversity, and can help combat rising CO₂ levels, heat island effects, air pollution and noise.

“Not only do they also provide a place for water to soak away,” says Fenner, “they can even create resources from water – such as generating energy from the water flow through sustainable drainage systems and providing places for amenity and recreation.”

All well and good but with a long list of potential ‘blue–green’ choices, and an equally long list of benefits, how do cities choose the best options?

One of the major outputs of the Blue–Green Cities initiative is a ‘toolbox’ for authorities, planners, businesses and communities to help them decide. Using Newcastle ̽��ֱ��’s CityCat model, the team assessed how well green infrastructures performed in holding back surface flows, and used novel tracer techniques to follow the movement and trapping of sediments during intense storms. Then they mapped the benefits in a geographic information system (GIS) to identify physical locations that are ‘benefit hotspots’.

̽��ֱ��tools were developed by evaluating the performance benefits of green infrastructure gathered from sites in both the UK and USA. As part of a recent 12-month demonstration study in Newcastle, a Learning Action Alliance network was set up with local stakeholders that has, says Fenner, led to new opportunities that reflect the priorities and preferences of communities and local residents.

Now, Newcastle City Council, the Environment Agency, Northumbrian Water, Newcastle ̽��ֱ��, Arup and Royal Haskoning DHV have combined to be the first organisations in the country to explicitly commit to a blue–green approach, as recommended by the research. ̽��ֱ��hope is that other local and national organisations will follow suit.

Embracing resilience, as these organisations are doing, is vitally important when dealing with natural hazards, says Emily So, who leads CURBE: “We should remember that flooding is a natural process and a hazard we need to learn to live with. It is often the disjointed configuration of the built environment that results in it being a risk to the communities. Our aim should be to design to reduce the impact of, and our recovery time from, this natural hazard.”

Fenner adds: “Continuing to deliver an effective and reliable water and wastewater service despite disruptive challenges such as flooding is hard, but vital; it requires continuous and dramatic innovation. In the future, we will see fully water-sensitive cities, where water management is so good that it’s almost as if the city isn’t there.”

̽��ֱ��Blue–Green Cities project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), involves researchers from nine UK universities and is led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Nottingham. A parallel project, Clean Water for All, funded by EPSRC and the National Science Foundation, connects the team with researchers in the USA.

Inset image: Ed Barsley.

Flash floods, burst riverbanks, overflowing drains, contaminants leaching into waterways: some of the disruptive, damaging and hazardous consequences of having too much rain. But can cities be designed and adapted to live more flexibly with water – to treat it as friend rather than foe?

We need to fundamentally rewrite the rule book on how we perceive water as a hazard to towns and cities

Ed Barsley

Artist's interpretation of existing (left) and adapted (right) responses to flooding

Flood risk as a driver for change

While the Blue–Green Cities project focuses on urban drainage at times of normal to excessive rainfall, Ed Barsley is more concerned with helping communities consider the consequences of extreme events.

“Floods are devastating in their impact and flood risk is often seen as a burden to be endured,” says Barsley, “but future proofing and planning for resilience can and should be used as a driver for increasing the quality of buildings, streets and neighbourhoods – a chance for exciting change in our cities.”

As a case study, Barsley is using the village of Yalding in Kent, which has endured physical, economic and psychological impacts as a result of flooding.

He looked at how each house in the village prepared for and was affected by its most recent flood, its location and building material, and even its millimetre threshold height; and then he looked at future flood risk scenarios. ̽��ֱ��result is a methodology for assessing resilience that can be used to help inform and plan for adaptation, and is transferable to other communities large or small across the UK and worldwide.

“When we communicated the risks to the community, we found that resilience means different things to different people. Understanding priorities can help them tailor their own strategy to be contextually appropriate,” explains Barsley, who is special advisor on flood risk in the South East to Greg Clark MP, Secretary of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government.

For homes in which resistance measures like flood barriers will be overcome, one option might be to regard the lower floor as a sacrificial space – an area that can be flooded without disrupting waste, power or water. In Yalding, there are examples of homeowners who have done just this and added an extra storey to their homes.

“I’d like to see resilience rewarded and for us to begin to live with water in a different manner. Embedding long-term resilience has huge potential for creating vibrant and enriching spaces.”

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Ounce of prevention, pound of cure

lw355 — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:34:13 +0000

Benjamin Franklin famously advised fire-threatened Philadelphians in 1736 that “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Clearly, preventing fires is better than fighting them, but to what extent can we protect ourselves from natural disasters? Hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions are not in themselves preventable, but some of their devastating effects could be reduced through forward planning.

“It’s important to be able to recover resiliently from disasters and, as part of this, it’s vital to identify the vulnerabilities of communities living in hazard-prone regions,” explained Michael Ramage from the Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE). By putting resources into resilience and building back better, communities can reduce the risk of disastrous consequences should a similar event reoccur.”

Now, thanks to an information system that Cambridge researchers developed originally for tracking how regions recover from disasters, communities could soon have the means to understand how best to protect themselves from future catastrophes.

̽��ֱ��story begins in Haiti, where CURBE researcher Daniel Brown has been working over the past year with the British Red Cross and the United Nations following the devastating earthquake in 2010, which killed 316,000, displaced 1.3 million and destroyed almost 100,000 houses. In a country that was deeply impoverished before the earthquake, people continue to live under tarpaulins exposed to safety and security risks, with limited access to water, livelihoods and key services.

Brown travelled to the country to field-test a system that he and colleagues at Cambridge Architectural Research (CAR) and ImageCat had developed during the previous four years as a mapping technique for tracking post-disaster recovery.

With funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Brown had identified a suite of 12 ‘performance indicators’ spanning core recovery sectors extracted from high-resolution satellite imagery. He used these to map the recovery process in Ban Nam Khem, Thailand, after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, by looking at aspects such as the movement of populations, the construction of dwellings, the accessibility of roads, and the loss and rebuilding of livelihoods.

In Thailand and Pakistan, the system had already proved to be extremely useful. Brown’s work provided data and results that assisted decision making and had the potential to ensure the recovery process was both transparent and accountable.

In Haiti, the EPSRC-funded follow-on project aimed to fine-tune the performance indicators within operational situations to suit the workflow of aid agencies.

What Brown found, however, was that in the complex and dynamic situation that follows a disaster, agencies desperately needed a real-time system to help them decide where to put resources. “Many of the hundreds of maps produced within the first week of the Haiti earthquake were soon out of date because of the changeability of the situation,” he explained. “There was also a massive duplication of effort, with agencies often lacking trained staff to ensure the right information about buildings and people was acquired at the right time.”

Dr Stephen Platt, Chairman of CAR, who has also been working on the project, described how these findings confirmed the results of a survey the team had previously carried out: “Agencies told us that they lack coordinated mapping information on where displaced populations have gone and where they have begun to return to, as well as damage to livelihoods, and rehabilitation of homes and infrastructure. It’s very hard for them to decide where to put funds to the best effect for positive and resilient change.”

Brown’s first task was a remote analysis of the affected area from his office in Cambridge, using pre-disaster satellite imagery together with a new technique based on high-resolution oblique aerial photographs that capture views of the façade of buildings, and Lidar, which measures building height. On his arrival in Haiti, he identified which of the performance indicators was relevant for planning and used these to gather field information on the state of buildings, the socioeconomic impact on people, the safest places to rebuild and the community’s views. All data were integrated into a single database to aid the design of a rebuilding programme.

“We were delighted to find that the information system can be used for all phases of the disaster cycle, from preparedness through to damage assessment, then planning and finally recovery monitoring. You could think of each phase comprising a single module in the database. All these phases are effectively interrelated with each other – data produced during one phase can be used in another phase. So when we collected damage data, these could be used as a baseline to inform planning, and so on,” explained Brown.

Ramage, Principal Investigator for the follow-on project, added: “You can see how a system that can be used to predict where future vulnerabilities might be in a community is so important. And, through Steve’s work in New Zealand, Chile and Italy, we have learnt more about how governments and agencies in developed countries are currently responding to disasters, which has allowed us to learn more about how our system and ideas might be adapted for different contexts.”

Echoing this, Dr Emily So, Director of CURBE, explained how the project fitted into what’s been called the disaster management cycle: “Governments and agencies think in terms of mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

What we are trying to do in our research – which builds on 25 years of work in this area in the Department of Architecture under the leadership of Professor Robin Spence – is to make sure that we not only do reactive groundwork after the disaster but also proactive work, to mitigate and prepare ahead of the event and reduce the risk of disaster.”

̽��ֱ��team has recently been awarded funding for a two-year project involving eight global institutions with the remit of using satellite remote sensing to understand risk and vulnerabilities in communities around the world, under the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme.

“ ̽��ֱ��hazard itself is not what creates the disaster,” added So. “It’s the quality of the housing and the social fabric. This is where CURBE can help in terms of assessing exposure and proposing methods of evaluating it. Better information means better ideas, means better protection.”

For more information, please contact Louise Walsh (louise.walsh@admin.cam.ac.uk) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Office of External Affairs and Communications.

Working with humanitarian organisations in Haiti, Cambridge researchers have found that an information system they designed to track how regions recovered from disasters can also be used to support preparedness, planning and project management.

Better information means better ideas, means better protection.

Dr Emily So

Colin Crowley on flickr

Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes