Reconnaissance Mission in Peru

The Pisco-Chincha (Peru) earthquake, which occurred the 15th of August, 2007, left several hundred people dead and thousands of buildings either collapsed or very severely damaged. The widespread liquefaction that occurred is one of the worst cases of this phenomenon ever. Invited by Professor Jorge Alva, Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the National University of Peru (UNI), Lima, and hosted also by Professor Carlos Zavala, Director of CISMID, the joint Peruvian-Japanese center for earthquake engineering, a team of three from the MAE Center traveled to the affected area. The MAE Center reconnaissance team arrived on the 29th of August and departed on the 5th of September. Field work was extensive, and cooperation with Peruvian colleagues in developing a report on the effects of the earthquake is underway. The MAE Center team was lead by Center Director Amr Elnashai, and included Oh Sung Kown, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, and Omar Pineda, Loss Assessment Projects Manager. The team was also joined by Luis Moran-Yanez, Coordinator of Graduate Programs at the National University of Peru, Piura, and Guillermo Huaco, researcher in CISMID and UNI. The MAE Center and UNI signed a memorandum of cooperation in research and education in seismic risk on the last day of the visit. Plans have already been agreed upon for the MAE Center to host two researchers from UNI, and for cooperation in site response testing and analysis (site response is thought to be the major factor affecting damage distribution on the August 2007 earthquake).