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1. Impacts of Hurricane Dorian on the Bahamas: field observations of hazard intensity and performance of the built environment

   https://doi.org/10.1080/21664250.2021.1958613  

   Kijewski-Correa, Tracy ; Roueche, David ; Kennedy, Andrew ; Allen, Doug ; Marshall, Justin ; Kaihatu, James ; Wood, Richard L. ; Smith, Daniel J. ; Lester, Henry ; Lochhead, Meredith ; et al ( August 2021 , Coastal Engineering Journal)

   null (Ed.)

   On September 1 2019, Hurricane Dorian made landfall in Elbow Cay in the Bahamas with sustained winds of 295 km/h and a central pressure of 910 mb, with subsequent landfalls in Marsh Harbour and Grand Bahama Island, where it stalled for two days. This paper presents field observations of Dorian’s coastal hazards and impacts on the built environment in these locales, collected by the Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) Network. Data were collected using a mixed methodological approach: (1) surveying high-water marks and inundation extent, including an approximately 8 m high water mark in Marsh Harbour, (2) conducting surface-level forensic assessments of damage to 358 structures, and (3) rapidly imaging 475 km of routes using street-level panoramas. Field observations are complemented by a debris field analysis using high-resolution satellite imagery. Observed performance reiterates the potential for well-confined, elevated construction to perform well under major hurricanes, but with the need to codify such practices through the addition of storm surge design provisions and an increase in the design wind speeds in the Bahamas Building Code. This study further demonstrates the value of robust reconnaissance infrastructure for capturing perishable data following hurricanes and making such data rapidly available using publicly accessible platforms. 

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2. Informally-Constructed houses in Puerto Rico under Earthquake load:Building Capacity for Safer Post-disaster Shelter: Leveraging Local Understanding and Advanced Engineering Assessments

   https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-gyhe-jk11  

   Murray, Polly ; Feliciano, Dirsa ; Goldwyn, Briar ; Liel, Abbie ; Arroyo, Orlando ; Javernick-Will, Amy ( January 2024 , Designsafe-CI)

   More than 1.6 billion people worldwide live in informally constructed houses, many of which are reinforced with concrete. Patterns of past earthquake damage suggest that these homes have significant seismic vulnerabilities, endangering their occupants. The characteristics of these houses vary widely with local building practices. In addition, these vulnerabilities are potentially exacerbated by incremental construction practices and building practices that address wind/flood risk in multi-hazard environments. Yet, despite the ubiquity of this type of construction, there have not been efforts to systematically assess the seismic risks to support risk-reducing design and construction strategies. In this study, we developed a method to assess the seismic collapse capacity of informally constructed housing that accounts for local building practices and materials, quantifying the effect of building characteristics on collapse risk. We exercise the method to assess seismic performance of housing in the US. Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico, which has high seismic hazard and experiences frequent hurricanes. This analysis showed that heavy construction, often due to the addition of a second story, and the presence of an open ground story leads to a high collapse risk. Severely corroded steel bars could also worsen performance. Although houses with infill performed better than those with an open ground story, confined masonry construction techniques produced a major reduction in collapse risk when compared to infilled or open-frame construction. Infill construction with partial height walls performed very poorly. Well-built reinforced concrete column jackets and the addition of infill in open first-story bays can reduce the greater risks of openground- story houses. These findings, which are quantified in the results portion of this article, are intended to support the development of design and construction recommendations for safer housing.There is an urgent need to improve community capacity to recover more effectively after disasters through safer design and construction practices. To do this, training programs need to foster an improved understanding of shelter design and construction to withstand future wind and earthquake events. This project analyzed informal builders’ perceptions of housing safety in Puerto Rico (responding to 2017's Hurricane Maria and the 2019-2020 earthquake swarm) and homeowner’s perceptions of housing safety in Philippines (responding to 2013's Typhoon Haiyan and 2017's Ormoc earthquake) to: (1) assess local understanding of shelter safety in multiple hazards, including causal factors influencing this understanding, through a household survey in the Philippines and a survey to informal contractors in Puerto Rico; (2) assess the expected performance of various post-disaster shelter typologies to quantify safety during future earthquake and wind events using performance-based engineering methods, developing a rapid screening tool that can be used in design or evaluation; (3) identify conflicts between perceived and assessed safety of shelter, and why these conflicts exist, by comparing engineering assessments with local perceptions; and (4) create a communication design for organizations assisting with training for safer housing construction. 

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3. Informally-Constructed houses in Puerto Rico under Hurricane load:Building Capacity for Safer Post-disaster Shelter: Leveraging Local Understanding and Advanced Engineering Assessments

   https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-2b49-dx51  

   Lochhead, Meredith ; Goldwyn, Briar ; Venable, Casie ; Liel, Abbie ; Javernick-Will, Amy ( January 2024 , Designsafe-CI)

   This study assesses the wind performance of various housing typologies representing informal construction practices in Puerto Rico to suggest modifications to enhance housing resilience in hurricanes. Based on fieldwork and interviews, the study defined four base housing typologies and possible variations in design and construction details. Each house was assessed using performance-based static wind analysis of potentially critical components. The results show that the initial governing failure mode in all base house typologies considered is roof panel loss due to tear-through at the fasteners, with subsequent governing failures being panel loss due to failures at the purlin-to-truss connections and failures of the truss-to-wall connections. In-plane wall failures and masonry uplift failures were both found to occur at much higher wind speeds than roof failures. To improve the hurricane performance, several feasible modifications are suggested, including installing hurricane straps at both the truss-to-wall and the purlin-to-truss connections, as well as improving the panel-fastener interface. In the construction of new roofs, this study found that using reduced spacing between roof members, hip roofs instead of gable roofs, and higher roof slopes leads to improved performance. These recommendations can make houses built through informal construction processes safer and more resilient to hurricanes as a form of climate adaptation.There is an urgent need to improve community capacity to recover more effectively after disasters through safer design and construction practices. To do this, training programs need to foster an improved understanding of shelter design and construction to withstand future wind and earthquake events. This project analyzed informal builders’ perceptions of housing safety in Puerto Rico (responding to 2017's Hurricane Maria and the 2019-2020 earthquake swarm) and homeowner’s perceptions of housing safety in Philippines (responding to 2013's Typhoon Haiyan and 2017's Ormoc earthquake) to: (1) assess local understanding of shelter safety in multiple hazards, including causal factors influencing this understanding, through a household survey in the Philippines and a survey to informal contractors in Puerto Rico; (2) assess the expected performance of various post-disaster shelter typologies to quantify safety during future earthquake and wind events using performance-based engineering methods, developing a rapid screening tool that can be used in design or evaluation; (3) identify conflicts between perceived and assessed safety of shelter, and why these conflicts exist, by comparing engineering assessments with local perceptions; and (4) create a communication design for organizations assisting with training for safer housing construction. 

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4. A Framework for Harnessing Citizen Scientists and Journalist Networks for Post-disaster Reconnaissance

   Clayton, P.M. ; Murthy, D. ; Lago, F. ( January 2019 , 2019 Natural Hazards Workshop—Researchers Meeting)

   null (Ed.)

   Vast amounts of damage data exist following natural disasters; the difficulty is collecting these perishable data in a timely fashion and curating them in a way that facilitates their use in follow-on research. Traditional on-the-ground reconnaissance efforts tend to focus limited human and financial resources on collecting and documenting detailed data of the most severe damage, typically in relatively small geographic areas immediately following an event. To improve post-event loss predictions, it is imperative that we collect broad and robust damage datasets, including details on good and poor performance and performance in small-to-moderate events. This presentation will introduce a framework to proactively engage local journalists and citizen scientists to collect vast amounts of real-world observational data via social media networks, such that valuable time, money, and engineering expertise can be focused on interpreting the citizen science data and on investigating the most interesting observations of damage more fully. The presentation will discuss how parts of this framework are being implemented in a National Science Foundation RAPID Response Research project to collect and curate social media data from Hurricane Florence and what future work is necessary to fully realize this citizen scientist-enabled framework for developing robust damage datasets for the natural hazards research community. 

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5. Enhancing Student Preparedness Through Experiential Learning: Lessons Learned from Assessing Building Structural Damages after the January-May 2020 Earthquakes in Puerto Rico

   García Canto, L. ( July 2020 , 18th LACCEI International Multi-Conference for Engineering, Education, and Technology)

   Puerto Rico is exposed to multiple hazards including hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods. The Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP) at the University of Puerto Rico aims to introduce students to interdisciplinary problem-solving related to real challenges, especially those associated with the occurrence of natural disasters. The objective of this work is to share our experience with experiential learning related to structural engineering. The lessons learned from this experience, from the student ́s perspective, could encourage faculty members to develop similar undertakings in their programs and students to participate when opportunities arise. During the 2019 fall semester, we enrolled in a course which covered the relationship between design and natural disasters, with an emphasis on rapid response to recover during the aftermath. The course combined lectures and in-class exercises on basic structural analysis, classifications of structures and the use of the FEMA Rapid Visual Screening (P-154) form. This was complemented with field visits of structures affected by Hurricane Maria where we developed several case studies. From December of 2019 to February 2020, Puerto Rico suffered an earthquake swarm reaching magnitudes as high as 6.4, which caused structural damages throughout the South West of the island. Following these events, we were able to use the training acquired during our course in a real-life, post-disaster situation. At the University, we participated in visual inspection brigades, where we aided professional engineers and faculty members in data collection and categorizing building damages. Our involvement helped streamline efforts as we provided additional support in report writing and organization of the data collected using GIS and other tools. The results of the visual inspections indicated that in many cases pre- existing conditions were aggravated by the earthquakes. Furthermore, we also witnessed firsthand the complexities of assessing infrastructure damage during and following high seismic activity. This experience enhanced our awareness of the significance of our profession in ensuring the safety of others both immediately after an earthquake and in the face of future disasters. 

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