Huge earthquakes and tsunamis have caused serious damage to important structures such as civil infrastructure elements, buildings and power plants around the globe. To quantitatively evaluate such damage processes and to design effective prevention and mitigation measures, the latest high-performance computational mechanics technologies, which include telascale to petascale computers, can offer powerful tools. The phenomena covered in this book include seismic wave propagation in the crust and soil, seismic response of infrastructure elements such as tunnels considering soil-structure interactions, seismic response of high-rise buildings, seismic response of nuclear power plants, tsunami run-up over coastal towns and tsunami inundation considering fluid-structure interactions. The book provides all necessary information for addressing these phenomena, ranging from the fundamentals of high-performance computing for finite element methods, key algorithms of accurate dynamic structural analysis, fluid flows with free surfaces, and fluid-structure interactions, to practical applications with detailed simulation results. The book will offer essential insights for researchers and engineers working in the field of computational seismic/tsunami engineering.

With the continued improvements in computing power and digital information availability, we are witnessing the increasing use of high-performance computers to enhance simulations for the forecasting of hazards, disasters, and responses. This major reference work summarizes the theories, analysis methods, and computational results of various earthquake simulations by the use of supercomputers. It covers simulations in the fields of seismology, physical geology, earthquake engineering — specifically the seismic response of structures — and the socioeconomic impact of post-earthquake recovery on cities and societies. Individual chapters address phenomena such as earthquake cycles and plate boundary behavior, tsunamis, structural response to strong ground motion, and post-disaster traffic flow and economic activity. The methods used for these simulations include finite element methods, discrete element methods, smoothed particle hydrodynamics, and multi-agent models, among others.The simulations included in this book provide an effective bird's-eye view of cutting-edge simulations enhanced with high-performance computing for earthquake occurrence, earthquake damage, and recovery from the damage, combining three of the major fields of earthquake studies: earth science, earthquake engineering, and disaster-mitigation-related social science. The book is suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduates, and researchers in these fields.

Integrated earthquake simulation (IES) is a new method for evaluating earthquake hazards and disasters induced in cities and urban areas. It utilises a sequence of numerical simulations of such aspects as earthquake wave propagation, ground motion amplification, structural seismic response, and mass evacuation. This book covers the basics of numerical analysis methods of solving wave equations, analyzing structural responses, and developing agent models for mass evaluation, which are implemented in IES. IES makes use of Monte-Carlo simulation, which takes account of the effects of uncertainties related to earthquake scenarios and the modeling of structures both above and below ground, and facilitates a better estimate of overall earthquake and disaster hazard. It also presents the recent achievement of enhancing IES with high-performance computing capability that can make use of automated models which employ various numerical analysis methods. Detailed examples of IES for the Tokyo Metropolis Earthquake and the Nankai Trough Earthquake are given, which use large scale analysis models of actual cities and urban areas.

As geological threats become more imminent, society must make a major commitment to increase the resilience of its communities, infrastructure, and citizens. Recent earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand, Haiti, and Chile provide stark reminders of the devastating impact major earthquakes have on the lives and economic stability of millions of people worldwide. The events in Haiti continue to show that poor planning and governance lead to long-term chaos, while nations like Chile demonstrate steady recovery due to modern earthquake planning and proper construction and mitigation activities. At the request of the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council hosted a two-day workshop to give members of the community an opportunity to identify "Grand Challenges" for earthquake engineering research that are needed to achieve an earthquake resilient society, as well as to describe networks of earthquake engineering experimental capabilities and cyberinfrastructure tools that could continue to address ongoing areas of concern. Grand Challenges in Earthquake Engineering Research: A Community Workshop Report explores the priorities and problems regions face in reducing consequent damage and spurring technological preparedness advances. Over the course of the Grand Challenges in Earthquake Engineering Research workshop, 13 grand challenge problems emerged and were summarized in terms of five overarching themes including: community resilience framework, decision making, simulation, mitigation, and design tools. Participants suggested 14 experimental facilities and cyberinfrastructure tools that would be needed to carry out testing, observations, and simulations, and to analyze the results. The report also reviews progressive steps that have been made in research and development, and considers what factors will accelerate transformative solutions.

This set of proceedings is based on the International Conference on Advances in Building Technology in Hong Kong on 4-6 December 2002. The two volumes of proceedings contain 9 invited keynote papers, 72 papers delivered by 11 teams , and 133 contributed papers from over 20 countries around the world. The papers cover a wide spectrum of topics across the three technology sub-themes of structures and construction, environment, and information technology. The variety within these categories spans a width of topics, and these proceedings provide readers with a good general overview of recent advances in building research.

The six volumes of Peterson's Annual Guides to Graduate Study, the only annually updated reference work of its kind, provide wide-ranging information on the graduate and professional programs offered by accredited colleges and universities in the United States and U.S. territories and those in Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Africa that are accredited by U.S. accrediting bodies. Books 2 through 6 are divided into sections that contain one or more directories devoted to individual programs in a particular field. Book 1 includes institutional profiles indicating the degrees offered, enrollment figures, admission and degree requirements, tuition, financial aid, housing, faculty, research projects and facilities, and contacts at more than 2,000 institutions.