In This Issue
Summer Bridge Issue on Engineering for Disaster Resilience
July 1, 2019 Volume 49 Issue 2
The articles in this issue present examples of engineering innovation to develop resilient infrastructure.
Articles In This Issue
  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorThomas D. O’Rourke

    Planet Earth is both highly populated and increasingly unsettled with respect to natural hazards. Population expansion exposes large numbers of people and expanses of infrastructure to extreme events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. These and other disasters can ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorAndrew Cuomo

    New York is what it is because we built it that way. The Erie Canal, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Holland Tunnel—these engineering marvels exemplify the bold spirit that characterized New York for decades. And the New York subway system was no different. Opened in 1904, ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorBilal M. Ayyub and Alice C. Hill

    Each year, governments and the private sector invest trillions of dollars in infrastructure that may not withstand future risks from climate change (Oxford Economics 2017). Most of the world’s new infrastructure will be built in developing countries, which face the dual challenges of disaster ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorCharles Scawthorn and Keith Porter

    Urban economies depend on shared infrastructure for water, power, communications, and transportation. This critical infrastructure can be impaired by design and construction flaws, deterioration over time, obsolescence, accidents, and excess demand, but this article focuses on damage from natural ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorGregory Baecher, Michelle Bensi, Allison Reilly, Brian Phillips, Lewis (Ed) Link, Sandra Knight, and Gerald Galloway

    The hurricane and flood disasters of recent decades have created a paradigm shift in how engineers approach natural hazards. The federal and some local governments have moved from standards-based approaches to developing risk-informed project plans, recognizing the importance of uncertainty in ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorChristopher Rojahn, Laurie Johnson, Thomas D. O’Rourke, Veronica Cedillos, Therese P. McAllister, and Steven L. McCabe

    The concept of community resilience is complex and multidimensional, relying on engineering and other disciplines to help communities break the cycle of destruction and recovery and reduce the impacts of earthquakes and other hazards. This article presents proposed prioritized actions to improve ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorBruce R. Ellingwood, John W. van de Lindt, and Therese P. McAllister

    Common to the many definitions of resilience in the literature and in policy statements is the notion that resilience is the ability to prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions. The performance of the built environment and the support of ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorLucile Jones andMarissa Aho

    Los Angeles, the second largest city in the nation and home to the largest US port, is subject to some of the greatest risks from natural disasters. It is situated among the eight counties of Southern California where more than 150 fault segments are each capable of generating a damaging earthquake ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorRosalyn Berne

    Risk is an inevitability of the modern condition, deeply woven into technological society and the built environment. An ethical approach to engineering requires looking beyond the technological calculation of risks to ask probing questions about impacts on individuals and society in terms of ...

  • Monday, July 1, 2019
    AuthorEkua Bentil

    RON LATANISION (RML): Thank you for joining us today. We’re delighted to have this opportunity to speak with you, and happy to have an electrical engineer who is involved with the World Bank and finance and all kinds of things. How did you choose to study electrical engineering?

    EKUA BENTIL: ...