Earthquakes

Dashing the dream of ideal ‘invisibility’ cloaks for stress waves

Roman arenas have survived in many earthquake-prone regions. Did the Romans inadvertently build seismic wave cloaks when they designed colosseums? Some researchers believe they did due to the arenas' resemblance to modern experimental elastodynamic cloaking devices. (Photo: Paolo Costa Baldi via Wikimedia Commons)

Whether Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, which perfectly steers light waves around objects to make them invisible, will ever become reality remains to be seen, but perfecting a more crucial cloak is impossible, a new study says. It would have perfectly steered stress waves in the ground, like those emanating from a blast, around objects like buildings to make them “untouchable.”

Friday, June 7, 2019

New faces: Macedo driven to understand geotechnical risks and make cities more resilient, sustainable

Assistant Professor Jorge Macedo

Though they’re relatively rare, the consequences of disasters like earthquakes, flooding and landslides are dire — and growing. Just ask Jorge Macedo, who thinks a lot about the risks to people, communities and engineering systems from those kinds of extreme events.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Silence to sound: Looking at Twitter posts from 2017’s Hurricane Harvey shows lack of activity can tell first responders where trouble’s brewing

Floodwaters cover Port Arthur, Texas, on August 31, 2017, following Hurricane Harvey. Staff Sgt. Daniel J. Martinez took this photo from a South Carolina Helicopter Aquatic Rescue Team UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during rescue operations following the storm. (Photo: Staff Sgt. Daniel J. Martinez, U.S. Air National Guard)

With another hurricane season beginning June 1 — and some forecasters predicting another busy one — researchers in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering are working on a tool to help first-responders use Twitter activity to identify developing crises after a storm while also helping civilians more effectively plug in to disaster response efforts.

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Eyewitness accounts fill in details of 1946 Dominican Republic tsunami

Claudio Martinez from the Dominican Republic’s Oficina Nacional de Meteorologia in Matancitas with local resident Patria, right, who took Martinez and Georgia Tech’s Hermann Fritz back to the site of a 1946 tsunami in the area. Patria remembered how high waters had reached at this palm tree, helping the team reconstruct the tsunami’s impacts more than seven decades after it happened. (Photo Courtesy: Hermann Fritz)

Almost 70 years later, the man remembered the August day in Playa Rincon, when he clung to the top of an almond tree to survive a tsunami where the waters rushed about 700 meters inland after a magnitude 8.1 earthquake.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Yavari’s new project will lay a mathematical foundation for cloaking structures

Professor Arash Yavari stands in front of his packed bookcase in his Mason Building office. Yavari has embarked upon a four-year research project to lay the mathematical foundations for cloaking structures from earthquakes and other stress waves. (Photo: Jess Hunt-Ralston)

Can you hide a building from a stress wave, like an earthquake or even some kind of blast or explosion? If that kind of “cloaking” were possible, it could shape how we design critical structures like nuclear power plants. Arash Yavari has started a new four-year, half-million dollar federally funded project to lay the mathematical foundations for that kind of technology and explore if it’s theoretically possible while still respecting the laws of physics.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Documenting disaster: Group led by Tech experts gathers key data after major catastrophes to prepare for the next one

Alejandro Martinez collects data in Mexico after a major earthquake in September 2017. Martinez, MSCE 2012, Ph.D. 2015, was part of a team from the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association that traveled to the impact zone to gather “perishable” data about the earthquake to help scientists and engineers prepare for future events. (Photo Courtesy of Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association via the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine)

Just days after a major earthquake struck central Mexico in September 2017, Alejandro Martinez, MSCE 2012, Ph.D. 2015, found himself at the site taking vital measurements of the disaster. “It was a shocking day for everyone,” Martinez says.

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

AUDIO: Hurricane Matthew compounds problems for Haiti’s infrastructure

Hermann Fritz, right, talks with people in Haiti on one of his research trips after an earthquake wreaked havoc on the island nation in 2010. Fritz told public radio's Marketplace the temporary communities that have since sprung up on the country's hillsides are now at risk from flooding and landslides in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. (Photo: Jean Vilmond Hilaire, Université de Quisqueya)

The rain and flooding from Hurricane Matthew threatens to wash away the makeshift communities that have sprouted on Haiti’s hillsides, making life worse for a country still recovering from a devastating earthquake six years ago. Associate Professor Hermann Fritz told the public radio program Marketplace the shacks people live in on those hills are vulnerable to flooding and landslides.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Two weeks in China and Japan teaches students about disaster engineering, Asian culture — and themselves

The International Disaster Reconnaissance Studies class on the Great Wall of China, one of their first stops during their two-week trip to China and Japan.

They climbed the Great Wall of China and explored the Forbidden City. They visited a town destroyed by an earthquake then preserved as a monument to the lives lost. They saw baby pandas and flood control systems, Japanese towns devastated by a tsunami and the Hiroshima memorial. But in the end, it was the relationships they built and an overnight summit of Mt. Fuji in Japan that etched this trip into the memories of four engineering students who traveled to China and Japan in early August.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Haitian Roundtable recognizes DesRoches as one of 2016's change-making Haitian-Americans

The Haitian Roundtable's 2016 1804 List of Changemakers and Ones to Watch.

A group of Haitian-American professionals has recognized Reginald DesRoches as one of the country’s outstanding leaders making an impact in their field and on their island homeland. The Haitian Roundtable released its 1804 List May 18, including DesRoches as one of 25 “changemakers.”

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

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School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Phone: 404-894-2201
Fax: 404-894-2278