MAE Center to study potential New Madrid earthquake effects
MAE Center Director Amr Elnashai
For many years, scientists have been talking about "the big one" in the Midwest--the earthquake which will result from the activation of the New Madrid fault which runs through a large portion of the Midwest. Now, researchers at the Mid-America Earthquake Center (MAE), headquartered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been contracted to conduct "Catastrophic Event Planning Scenarios--New Madrid Seismic Zone Earthquakes" for the Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency (DHS-FEMA) through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Civil Engineering Research Laboratories (CERL). The objective of the project is to enhance the readiness for response to a catastrophic event by providing the most realistic estimates possible of losses and impacts, and guidance on response and recovery planning.
"This study is the single largest most complex emergency management planning initiative every undertaken in this Nation," said DHS-FEMA Incident Response Chief Mike Pawlowski. "Many eyes are on us; there have already been many briefings on the Hill on this. A lot of people invested time and energy over the years to get us to this point in time. We have to seize the momentum; our Nation's safety depends on it!"
Phase I of the project, federally funded at $970,000, entails conducting an advanced and comprehensive earthquake loss assessment, response and recovery planning study for the Central and Eastern United States. The study area comprises the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. The study covers four FEMA regions; Regions IV, V, VI, and VII, including regional, state and city (or town) specific studies at the relevant levels of detail. It also includes advice on response and recovery planning at all levels, such as local government, industry, aid agencies, and other organizations participating in each regional scenario.
"The objective of the project is to improve the emergency preparedness of the region to respond to a major earthquake, by providing realistic estimates of losses and impacts," explained Amr Elnashai, director of the MAE Center and project principal investigator. "We will be building on the work that has already been done using FEMA's HAZUS loss estimation methodology and improving substantially the models and data that go into an earthquake loss assessment study".
"Selected regions and systems will be assessed using MAEviz, the Mid-America Earthquake Center's loss assessment and visualization tool, in Phase II of the project,"added Elnashai, who is also the the Bill and Elaine Hall Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Illinois. "The outcome will be a comprehensive assessment of seismic losses (damage to buildings, bridges, pipelines, critical facilities, communications, consequential fires, transportation disruption, hazardous materials, volume of debris, etc.), identification of vulnerabilities, advice on response and recovery, and requirements for HAZUS development in the short, medium, and long terms." It is estimated that overall economic impact directly inflicted by a NMSZ earthquake will be in the range of $60 to $70 billion, with indirect economic losses-such as business disruption, temporary housing, and the like-may be 2-3 times the direct losses.
The MAE Center is cooperating with several universities and organizations on the project, which started at Illinois in September 2006, and will continue for two years.
In November 2005, just five weeks after a series of catastrophic earthquakes in Pakistan, the MAE Center dispatched an earthquake field reconnaissance team to assess the damage, collect data, and derive lessons from the damaging earthquake. The MAE Center also sent a team to Indonesia after the massively damaging earthquake in Central Java of May 2006. A significant amount of data resulted from the two trips, and Elnashai--who has lead teams on field missions to 18 earthquake sites around the world since the early 1980s--hopes that other governments, including the United States, take the information seriously as well.
"Seeing the devastation in lesser-developed countries like Pakistan and Indonesia was not surprising," he remarked. "If you can imagine a city like Memphis or St. Louis leveled, and all of the bridges and interstate highways impassable, it would bear a striking resemblance to a third-world country."
The primary objectives of the current study-identified by the FEMA, Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC), CERL, and the MAE Center-include assessing the vulnerability of central and eastern USA built environment to earthquakes on the New Madrid Seismic Source Zone and the Wabash Valley earthquake zone. This will provide emergency managers and response and recovery planners at all levels with detailed estimates of damage and losses to enable articulating response and recovery plans.
The availability of widely accepted assessment results will also support response and recovery efforts such as analyzing the capability to receive and manage evacuees, developing program guidance for transition from sheltering to temporary housing in host cities, developing several host city plans for evacuees, and developing a generic template for host city plans for evacuees. The post-disaster scope of the project is undertaken by the MAE Center core institution in partnership with the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Three of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the contiguous United States were in the Midwest, ranging between 7.5 and 8 in magnitude. Felt effects were reported in the press in detail, from as far as New York and Washington D.C. The earthquakes even changed the course of the Mississippi and created new bodies of water within the region.
Contact: Amr Elnashai, the Bill and Elaine Hall Professor of Engineering and director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center, 217/265-5497 (office), 217/848-0440 (cell.
Timothy Gress, business development director of the MAE Center, 217/244-7158 (office), 217/714-7506 (cell).
Writer: Rick Kubetz, Office of Engineering Communications, College of Engineering, 217/244-7716, rkubetz@uiuc.edu.
(posted 2 Apr 2007)
"This study is the single largest most complex emergency management planning initiative every undertaken in this Nation," said DHS-FEMA Incident Response Chief Mike Pawlowski. "Many eyes are on us; there have already been many briefings on the Hill on this. A lot of people invested time and energy over the years to get us to this point in time. We have to seize the momentum; our Nation's safety depends on it!"
Phase I of the project, federally funded at $970,000, entails conducting an advanced and comprehensive earthquake loss assessment, response and recovery planning study for the Central and Eastern United States. The study area comprises the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. The study covers four FEMA regions; Regions IV, V, VI, and VII, including regional, state and city (or town) specific studies at the relevant levels of detail. It also includes advice on response and recovery planning at all levels, such as local government, industry, aid agencies, and other organizations participating in each regional scenario.
"The objective of the project is to improve the emergency preparedness of the region to respond to a major earthquake, by providing realistic estimates of losses and impacts," explained Amr Elnashai, director of the MAE Center and project principal investigator. "We will be building on the work that has already been done using FEMA's HAZUS loss estimation methodology and improving substantially the models and data that go into an earthquake loss assessment study".
"Selected regions and systems will be assessed using MAEviz, the Mid-America Earthquake Center's loss assessment and visualization tool, in Phase II of the project,"added Elnashai, who is also the the Bill and Elaine Hall Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Illinois. "The outcome will be a comprehensive assessment of seismic losses (damage to buildings, bridges, pipelines, critical facilities, communications, consequential fires, transportation disruption, hazardous materials, volume of debris, etc.), identification of vulnerabilities, advice on response and recovery, and requirements for HAZUS development in the short, medium, and long terms." It is estimated that overall economic impact directly inflicted by a NMSZ earthquake will be in the range of $60 to $70 billion, with indirect economic losses-such as business disruption, temporary housing, and the like-may be 2-3 times the direct losses.
The MAE Center is cooperating with several universities and organizations on the project, which started at Illinois in September 2006, and will continue for two years.
In November 2005, just five weeks after a series of catastrophic earthquakes in Pakistan, the MAE Center dispatched an earthquake field reconnaissance team to assess the damage, collect data, and derive lessons from the damaging earthquake. The MAE Center also sent a team to Indonesia after the massively damaging earthquake in Central Java of May 2006. A significant amount of data resulted from the two trips, and Elnashai--who has lead teams on field missions to 18 earthquake sites around the world since the early 1980s--hopes that other governments, including the United States, take the information seriously as well.
"Seeing the devastation in lesser-developed countries like Pakistan and Indonesia was not surprising," he remarked. "If you can imagine a city like Memphis or St. Louis leveled, and all of the bridges and interstate highways impassable, it would bear a striking resemblance to a third-world country."
The primary objectives of the current study-identified by the FEMA, Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC), CERL, and the MAE Center-include assessing the vulnerability of central and eastern USA built environment to earthquakes on the New Madrid Seismic Source Zone and the Wabash Valley earthquake zone. This will provide emergency managers and response and recovery planners at all levels with detailed estimates of damage and losses to enable articulating response and recovery plans.
The availability of widely accepted assessment results will also support response and recovery efforts such as analyzing the capability to receive and manage evacuees, developing program guidance for transition from sheltering to temporary housing in host cities, developing several host city plans for evacuees, and developing a generic template for host city plans for evacuees. The post-disaster scope of the project is undertaken by the MAE Center core institution in partnership with the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Three of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the contiguous United States were in the Midwest, ranging between 7.5 and 8 in magnitude. Felt effects were reported in the press in detail, from as far as New York and Washington D.C. The earthquakes even changed the course of the Mississippi and created new bodies of water within the region.
Contact: Amr Elnashai, the Bill and Elaine Hall Professor of Engineering and director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center, 217/265-5497 (office), 217/848-0440 (cell.
Timothy Gress, business development director of the MAE Center, 217/244-7158 (office), 217/714-7506 (cell).
Writer: Rick Kubetz, Office of Engineering Communications, College of Engineering, 217/244-7716, rkubetz@uiuc.edu.
(posted 2 Apr 2007)
