Engineers for a Sustainable World 2010
It all started from the first SEAOC dinner that I attended. Interestingly enough, the SEAOC dinner that night was dedicated to Henry Degenkolb, a great earthquake engineer. I recall Mark Sinclair provided the opening speech to commemorate Henry Degenkolb’s life and related his passion with the topic of the presentation that night, “Mitigating Seismic Hazard in the Developing Countries.” Brian Tucker, the founder of GeoHazards International (GHI) was the presenter. He started by discussing the alarming danger that many developing countries are facing: seismic vulnerability. The main concern is that population growth followed by urbanization in developing countries is unfortunately mostly accommodated by poor construction practice. Brian continued on to talk about GHI’s work, mostly in India. It struck me that something needs to be done and it can be done. But who will do it? After the presentation, I introduced myself to Brian Tucker and expressed my interest in getting involved with some of GHI’s work, especially if they planned to do work in my country of origin, Indonesia. To my surprise, they were actually planning to do some work related to the seismic and tsunami mitigation effort in Padang, Indonesia. Based on scientific studies, Padang is considered to have the highest tsunami risk in the world.
From that simple encounter, I was able to get involved in the project as it progressed along the way. Sponsored by Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), GHI, and Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at Stanford, this project took form as an interactive course at Stanford. Students, professors, engineering professionals and government officials from the US and Indonesia, particularly Padang, interacted and worked together to solve this big issue. Applying some of the FEMA guidelines related to tsunami design, they emphasized that evacuation routes need to be thoughtfully laid out and tsunami-resistant vertical evacuation structures provided. In the process of developing this system, the M7.6 earthquake hit the city of Padang on September 30, 2009. Based on the level of damage that occurred within the city and the unruly nature of people’s evacuation attempt following the earthquake, it was apparent that the city did not have the infrastructure to support the evacuation procedure yet. The effect of this earthquake can be considered a mild warning to what the city might experience during the predicted massive tsunami event. I had the fortunate opportunity to be part of the EERI reconnaissance effort led by Greg Dieirlein, a great structural engineering professor who was also the advisor for the Stanford course previously mentioned. Most of the team members participating in the reconnaissance effort were somewhat involved in the Padang effort. This way, EERI utilized the well-established network achieved through the previous hazard mitigation effort to conduct the reconnaissance. Not surprisingly, the team was able to perform the reconnaissance while collecting information to accommodate the next development of the mitigation effort. Currently, the project is still progressing and starting to be implemented in the midst of the city’s post-earthquake reconstruction effort.
All along, Degenkolb Engineers has been very supportive towards the effort and has been contributing to the rapid progress of the project. This was done by providing mentorship for the Stanford students within the course, sending an earthquake reconnaissance team to Padang, facilitating the students and government officials from Padang for their reconstruction effort with our expertise on retrofit techniques, and providing financial support to the program as well.
Everything started from a simple gesture and it grew into a positive involvement in this noble and remarkable project.
