- Summary: This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will create a new approach for evaluating the behavior of clusters of buildings on liquefiable ground during earthquakes and pave the way toward designing mitigation measures that improve building performance at a system level. Earthquake-induced soil liquefaction can cause substantial damage to urban areas where multiple buildings and infrastructure systems are clustered. Previous studies have shown that buildings located in close proximity to one another can interact in earthquakes affecting ground motions, settlement patterns, and building damage potential. The parameters that control the seismic performance of building clusters are poorly understood. As a result, mitigation measures that are currently designed perform poorly, particularly when the performance of a building is evaluated in the context of its surroundings. This award supports a systematic study of the impact of adjacent buildings on the effectiveness of liquefaction remediation techniques. In doing so, this award contributes to the resilience of cities globally.
