Free EERI webinar available on YouTube

Last month, EERI hosted a free webinar called Functional Recovery: Designing for Community Resilience, which focused on the emerging concept of functional recovery as a basis for earthquake-resistant design. Designing buildings and infrastructure for limited downtime – or an acceptably quick functional recovery – is not new, but it is receiving new attention through state and federal legislation, and showing new feasibility through research and technology.


Most intriguing is the recognition that designing for functional recovery is a necessary tool for achieving community-wide earthquake resilience. And if progress is to be measured at the community level, functional recovery will also be a matter of public policy.


The webinar was led by David Bonowitz, who is an appointed member of the new Federal Emergency Management Agency-National Institute of Standards and Technology working group on Functional Recovery of the Built Environment and Critical Infrastructure in the United States.


Discussion also touched on the current pandemic (self-isolation) intersecting with earthquakes and aftershocks.


Those who are involved in seismic retrofits or structural health monitoring might find it a worthwhile discussion.


GeoSIG is a sponsor of EERI, and we are happy to share pertinent information that may be useful.