Title

Advancements in seismic risk assessment of existing structures: insights from analytical models and empirical earthquake data

Biography

Gerard J. O'Reilly (pronounced: ge-rard  o-rai-li) is an Associate Professor of Structural Engineering at IUSS Pavia, widely known as the ROSE School. He obtained a PhD in Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology from the same institution and has held visiting researcher positions at the University of California, Berkeley and the Kobori Research Complex in Tokyo, Japan.

His primary research interests are in risk assessment, management, and mitigation, particularly in the context of performance-based earthquake engineering. His work addresses economic losses, collapse prevention, post-earthquake functionality, and occupant safety. He uses advanced numerical simulation and empirical data to model structural fragility, vulnerability and risk, in order to identify effective retrofitting measures. 

He has been involved in several international projects and is currently the coordinator of the €11.6M EU-funded ERIES project.

He is the 2022 winner of the Shah Family Innovation Prize awarded by EERI, and is an Associate Editor at Earthquake Spectra since 2025.

Title

Should we design for sequential earthquakes?

Biography

Murat Altuğ Erberik obtained his undergraduate degree in 1993 from the Department of Civil Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU). He then completed his master's degree in 1995 and his doctoral studies in 2001 in the structural engineering laboratory of the same department. Between 2002 and 2003, he conducted postdoctoral studies as a TÜBİTAK researcher at the Mid- America Earthquake Center head-quartered at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the United States. Since 2004, he has been working as an academic staff member in the Department of Civil Engineering at METU and is currently continuing his active research as a professor in the same department. Additionally, since 2021, he has been serving as the President of the Earthquake Engineering Association of Türkiye. He published many journal and conference papers, book chapters and supervised more than 30  M.S. and Ph.D. theses. He contributed to many national and intenational projects as a coordinator, researcher or advisor. His research topics include the linear and nonlinear dynamic analysis of structural systems; assessment and analysis of masonry and reinforced concrete structures under earthquake effects; earthquake damage and loss prediction studies; and energy-based structural design and evaluation.

Dr. Pelin Ozener is a Professor in the Civil Engineering Department of Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul-Turkey. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees in Geotechnical Engineering from Yildiz Technical University in 2001 and 2007, respectively. She has worked as a visiting researcher at the University of Washington on the Identification of time of liquefaction triggering assessments. Her research and professional interests are mainly related to Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering focusing on liquefaction, its remediation methods, site response, and dynamic behavior of soils. She is a member of ISSMGE, Turkish National Committee on Earthquake Engineering, Turkish National Committee on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. She is still serving as a geotechnical consultant in several geotechnical engineering projects, including stability of deep excavations, liquefaction mitigation, site improvement works, and tunnel-building interaction problems.

Title

Improving school infrastructure resilience to earthquakes and flooding

Biography

Prof Dina D’Ayala is the UNESCO Chair in Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Engineering @ UCL. She is Professor of Structural Engineering within the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering. She is Co-Director of the UCL EPICentre and Co-Director of the StrEnTHE, the Structural and Environmental Laboratory @UCL HERE EAST. She has been a Director of the International Association of Earthquake Engineers, and she is Fellow of the ICE and an associated editor of the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering.  Her specialism is Structural Resilience Engineering with particular emphasis on the assessment, strengthening, preservation and resilience of existing buildings, structures, transport infrastructure and cultural heritage.   She is a founder member and Scientific committee member of the ICOMOS ISCARSAH and worked on World Bank projects on the Seismic assessment and protection of the Architectural Heritage of Istanbul, and the catholic heritage of buildings in the Philippines, affected by the Bohol Earthquake and Super Typhoon Hayan, applying the FaMIVE procedure.  

Her current research focus is on infrastructure system resilience with the objective of producing interactive platforms to aid stakeholders’ communication and decision making to improve the resilience of infrastructures and communities, based on engineering evidence and rigorous assessment of risk from natural hazards. This critical requirement for sustainable societies can be fulfilled if advanced computing methods are used in intelligent and ethical ways. 

Prof D’Ayala has been the Chief Scientist of the World Bank Global Programme for Safer School (GPSS) and she has advised the UK Foreign Office on investments on School infrastructure resilience in Pakistan and Nepal, and the UK Department of Education on a risk model for buildings in their estate.

Koichi Kusunoki is a Professor at the Earthquake Research Institute (ERI), the University of Tokyo. He has also served as the Secretary-General of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering since 2014. He obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Tokyo in 1997. His research subjects are 1) Structural Behavior of Reinforced Concrete, 2) Structural Health Monitoring, 3) Seismic Design, and 4) Field investigation in the earthquake-affected area. He manages the building monitoring system at ERI to monitor about 40 buildings in Japan, El Salvador, Peru, New Zealand, and Turkey. He got awards such as the “Excellence Award of Technical Design Competition of Architectural Institute of Japan” (Architectural Institute of Japan, AIJ), “Encouraging Prize” (AIJ), “Encouraging Prize” (Japan Concrete Institute), and AIJ Prize.