A multidisciplinary team of U.S. earthquake researchers and design engineers, organized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), is leaving Feb. 28 to spend six days in Haiti. The team, under the leadership of Reginald DesRoches, Professor and Associate Chair of the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, will document scientific, engineering and societal effects of Jan. 12’s magnitude-7 earthquake. The goal is to focus on the disaster’s impacts on people, the performance of structures and lifelines, and the enormous societal challenges of relief, recovery and rebuilding, says the Oakland, Calif.-based EERI. Team members plan
Staying just hours ahead of another snow storm expected to hit Virginia’s Dulles International Airport on Feb. 10, about 40 workers from Miller & Long Concrete Construction, Bethesda, Md., installed 65 towers to shore the sole-surviving aircraft hangar unit at the three-year-old United Jet Center. Three other units at the private hangar collapsed during a Feb. 6 storm, which dumped 35.5 in. of wet snow on the facility’s roof. No one was injured during the three collapses, but many of the 14 aircraft were damaged. Photo: AP/Wideworld Failed Roof of manufactured-steel structure in Virginia had at least 35.5 in. of
A Jan. 22 article in the San Antonio Business Journal headlined “Risk of LEED Decertification Looms Large for Real Estate” contains “several inaccuracies, causing unnecessary anxiety in the marketplace,” says Ashley Katz, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Green Building Council. The Washington, D.C.-based group developed LEED, a popular green-building rating system. Bradley S. Carson’s article is based on a challenge, filed to USGBC last year, to the LEED-New Construction Gold certification awarded in 2007 to Northland Pines High School in Eagle River, Wis. The article said the school could be subject to decertification as a result of LEED 2009 provisions
In its final report on the collapse of the Dallas Cowboy’s practice facility, the National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends owners of other fabric-covered, tubular-steel-framed structures have their buildings evaluated. Some universities already have; of these, at least two have found the structures fail to meet established codes. Photo: Courtesy of the University of New Mexico Engineer’s report found flaws in the Summit Structures practice facility at the University of New Mexico. NIST concluded the Cowboy’s building designed and built by Summit Structures of Allentown, Pa., failed to withstand wind loads that were substantially less than required by design
A preliminary damage assessment map for major buildings and infrastructure in Port-au-Prince is now available from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research's Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNITAR/UNOSAT). Photo: Eduardo Fierro, BFP Engineers Inc. Collapsed two-, or possibly three-story reinforced concretebuilding in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Sites marked as "No Visual Damage" may have major structural damage not identifiable in the imagery. Damage there is likely underestimated. The same goes for road and bridge damage, says the group. Of 110 selected sites, 58 or 53% are visibly damaged or destroyed. Of these, 88% are government buildings; 60% are churches, 50% are
Damage from landslides is common in Haiti. In Port-au-Prince, there is widespread destruction of nonductile concrete structures. Many rubble or unreinforced masonry walls failed. The E-in-plan Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince still has much of the first floor intact, with windows unbroken, but there is total collapse above the first floor. There is very light reinforcing evident in failed columns near the entry. At the port, there is a collapsed pier and cranes, and several buildings are under water. Extensive lateral spreading and liquefaction is evident. These and numerous other on-site observations on damage from Haiti’s magnitude 7 earthqauke are from
The Indian government is considering adopting a new rating system for all new planned government and public-sector buildings. The Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA), developed by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Dehli, was first introduced in mid-2008 as a way to rate buildings’ environmental performance in a variety of climates. It rates buildings on a scale of one to five, with five being the highest performance rating. GRIHA has been developed for all types of buildings in different climatic zones of the country, said Deepak Gupta, secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
Photo: Hoto By CDI Inc. Related Links: Tower Drops: Troubled Texas Condo Ends With A Crash The troubled existence of the listing, unfinished, 31-story Ocean Tower condominium structure and attached parking garage in South Padre Island, Texas, came to an end on Dec. 13 with an implosion by Controlled Demolition Inc., Phoenix, Md. Mark Loizeaux, president, says internal cameras confirmed that the process worked as planned. CDI used the tension of tendons in the structure to tilt the tower to compensate for the list, then undermined it to create an eccentric load, rotated it slightlyand dropped it into a pile
In an effort to accelerate the development of cost-effective, sustainable concrete, Masdar, the developer of the planned carbon and waste-neutral Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, is holding a concrete mix design competition. The first prize is $150,000, for a sustainable concrete production method. The second prize is $50,000 for the lowest-carbon- footprint concrete mix. This is the first of several competitions to help Masdar, an initiative of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., achieve its goals for sustainability at Masdar City, says Omar. M. Waqfi, Masdar's specifications manager. "We are pushing and challenging people on all aspects [of sustainable development],
It costs on average $4.01 per sq ft to get a building certified under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system for green buildings, according to recent market research. That figure translates to $830 million in LEED-related construction spending from 2000 to 2008, says a study by USGBC and consultant Booz Allen Hamilton. The 52-page “Green Jobs Study” estimates $12.5 billion in LEED-certification-related spending will occur over the next five years, an amount that would sustain 230,000 jobs. In the same period, energy savings are expected to total $6 billion, with $4.8 billion directly
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