Workshop on Research with NEES Tsunami Facility

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

A tsunami laboratory facility -- a component of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) -- was funded recently at Oregon State University. This action is to support a workshop to review the present plan for this facility, to learn its physical constraints and limitations, to discuss potential research to be conducted at this facility, and to make recommendations for instrumentation needed to undertake this research. This tsunami facility will be utilized for a wide variety of research topics in tsunami hazard mitigation, as well as other research fields such as coastal engineering, nearshore oceanography, and geotechnical engineering. This facility -- a large-scale, three-dimensional, long-wave tank - will have essentially unique capabilities. This workshop will be an important step in providing input from the potential users. Also, the NEES program announcement contained the following statement, "The NEES collaboratory will form an integrated network that facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists and engineers, both within the U.S. and abroad." In this regard, the advanced network technologies will permit enhanced international collaborations through this tsunami facility. Therefore the workshop participants will include both national and international key scientists and engineers, not only tsunami researchers, but also researchers from other relevant research communities. Prior to the workshop, the PI will set up an electronic mailing list to start the discussion and to provide relevant workshop information. Following the workshop, the organizing committee will distribute the workshop report, including posting it on the workshop web site, the Tsunami Bulletin Board (TBB) and the Coastal_List (CL). (TBB and CL are e-mail bulletin boards for the tsunami and coastal-engineering research communities, respectively.)