My Career
From 2003 to 2008 I was fortunate to have the honor to serve as Professor in th e Department of Urban Management of Kyoto University, where I had engaged in doctoral studies from 1977 to 1981. I began my studies of structural engineering at the Brooklyn Technical High School in 1962, where I was strongly influenced upon reading Timoshenko’s History of Strength of Materials. My undergraduate studies were at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art(New York City), where I received my Bachelor of Engineering degree in 1966 with a Senior Thesis design of an orthotropic plate girder steel highway bridge that received First Prize in the Student category of the US Steel International Steel Highway Bridge Design Contest1. My Master of Science degree from Lehigh University in 1968 was based on a Master’s thesis entitled “Limit Analysis and Limit Equilibrium Solutions in Soil Mechanics”, which appeared in Soils and Foundations(Tokyo) vol. 10, no. 3.
Following graduation, I worked for the Consolidated Edison Company of New York2 on a number of projects, including the analysis of tornado effects on an overhead cable crossing of the Hudson River (involving 500 ft. steel towers), an analysis of the effects of those towers impacting a nuclear power plant containment structure, design of upgrades for several major 230 kv and 345 kv electric transmission tower structures, and development of a new steel pole-type transmission structure. The development of this new type of structure included research into new types of foundations in rock and soil, and the design and testing to destruction of a full-scale prototype 30 m+ pole structure. This work was the basis for the design of several hundred of these structures for the PJM line3 serving New York City, which involved the largest structures in the world of this type (at the time). In 1974 I joined Bechtel Corporation, where I worked on nuclear facilities primarily doing finite element modeling and structural design. While doing seismic design at Bechtel, I became interested in the basis for such design–that is, what was the appropriate earthquake level for design? This question led to related questions concerning the most appropriate distribution of buildings in a region, when damage due to natural hazards is taken into consideration(which it normally had not, at that time). That is, the question arose as to what is the most appropriate urban form, considering natural hazards? I decided to pursue this question as the topic for doctoral research, and determined that the most appropriate focus for such study would be a region with high seismic risk, and highurban population densities–in other words, Japan. I applied for and was admitted to Kyoto University, where I studied from 1977-1981 under Professor Yoshikazu Yamada, receiving a doctorate in 1981 with the doctoral dissertation Urban Seismic Risk: Analysis and Mitigation. Following graduation in 1981, I joined the consulting firm of Dames & Moore, engaging in major research projects funded by the US Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation and the insurance industry, as well as numerous projects for industry. Research included an examination of optimal earthquake research funding, an extension of the theoretical work on urban form using linear programming, development of a fire following earthquake model for US cities, and research into the seismic vulnerability and strengthening of low strength masonry. My work on low strength masonry included testing of a full-scale adobe building to destruction, on the University of California at Berkeley’s shake table facility in Richmond. At that time I was a founder of a major US-Japan activity within the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, which has evolved into a 20 year series of US-Japan workshops on urban earthquake hazards, funded on the US side by the National Science Foundation. Additionally, as a result of the work on low strength masonry, I was invited by the international Association for Earthquake Engineering to be a member of the committee that wrote its Guidelines for Earthquake Resistant Non-Engineered Construction. In 1987 I joined the consulting engineering firm of EQE International, and originated and developed the EQEHAZARD family of software, which developed into a major business unit for EQE (EQECAT) serving the global insurance industry. This work was the foundation for one of the three major strands of what has become a major industry– insurance loss estimation4. My work continued to be extremely diverse, and included development of the rapid visual screening methodology published by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency as FEMA 1545, and a major study of the Seismic Vulnerability and Impact of Disruption of Lifelines in the Conterminous United States(published as FEMA 224). Projects included the analysis for earthquake effects and development of seismic retrofit measures for 55 San Francisco fire department facilities, and a similar project for the City of Seattle involving 78 major buildings, such as the Seattle Opera House, Municipal Building and Hall of Justice. During this period I also continued field investigations of major disasters, including the 1988 Armenia, 1989 Loma Prieta, 1993 Hokkaido Nansei, 1994 Northridge, and 1999 Marmara and Duzce （Turkey） earthquakes, several major hurricanes, and numerous wildland and structural fires, including the 1989 First Interstate Bank Building fire（ the tallest high-rise building in California）, which resulted in numerous reports and publications.
As part of the US-Japan meetings mentioned above, I had arrived in Osaka Japan the evening of 16 January 1995, and was shaken early the next morning by the Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake, which was a close analog to the scenario event that was the focus of my PhD research at Kyoto University 15 years earlier. With Professor Hirokazu Iemura, I over flew Kobe that afternoon, observing the fires and damage, and the next day surveyed damage on the ground. That evening and late into the night, I walked from Kobe to Osaka through the devastated area, talking to residents huddled around fires outside their destroyed home in the cold January night. It was a sad experience that reinforced for me the need for better engineering against natural hazards. As a result of the Hanshin earthquake, while I’d come to Japan for a few day visit, I founded and ran EQE’s Tokyo office for the next two years. One of the first projects of the new office was a seismic retrofit of the AIG high-rise office building in Otemachi, Tokyo–the first seismic retrofit of a high-rise building in Japan.
On returning to the US in 1997, I assumed technical direction of a major project for the National Institute of Building Sciences involving the development of a national flood loss estimation model, as part of HAZUS®MH. Concurrent with that project, I managed the Infrastructure practice for EQE, and engaged in various structural and other analyses. A notable project was the seismic analysis of the Arecibo Radio Telescope–the cable suspended structure is the world’s largest radio observatory and has been featured in several motion pictures.
In 2003 I became Professor and Head of the Earthquake Disaster Prevention Systems Laboratory and, together with Associate Professor Junji Kiyono and Assistant Professor Yusuke Ono, have supervised research in structural seismic performance, lifeline vulnerability, network reliability, fire following earthquake, integrated physical/fiscal mitigation, liquefaction, crowd dynamics and strengthening of masonry buildings. Nineteen members of the Laboratory graduated the University, and 19 more received Master's degrees, with two of these receiving the Department's HUME Award for their research.
Members of the laboratory conducted field investigations of, and research regarding, the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu earthquake, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, 2005 Nias Islands earthquake, 2005 Pakistan earthquake, 2007 Noto earthquake, 2007 Niigata Chuetsu Oki earthquake and 2007 Cyclone Sidr. For contributions to the Pakistan Earthquake Recovery Team, I received an award from the World Bank and in 2007 was invited to deliver the Shah Distinguished Lecture on Catastrophe Risk, at Stanford University.
While earthquake engineering was founded over 150 years ago by Mallet in the United Kingdom, and made early and significant progress in Japan with the collaboration of Milne, Ewing, Omori and others, it was only in 1933 that the first strong motion recording was made, and only in the last several decades that sufficient records had been collected such that engineers could with some confidence identify the dynamic motions against which to design buildings and infrastructure. Reflecting back on the basis on which nuclear power facilities were designed for earthquake, in the 1970s, it is now apparent how much of our infrastructure is seismically obsolete. While we now believe we understand natural hazards’ causes and effects fairly well, we have only begun to design modern structures to resist their effects. More importantly, we have an enormous legacy of existing structures which will not perform well in future earthquakes, floods or cyclones. The key to building sustainable societies lies in finding costeffective ways to reduce these potential losses, which has been the focus of my career.
（名誉教授 元都市社会工学専攻）
1 The thesis was a joint project with another student(C. Hofmayer) and was advised by Prof. David H.H. Tung. The contest was an international contest, with a first prize in the Student category of $5,000. The Danish Technical University won second prize in the Student category. At the Awards Banquet, held at the Hotel Pierre in New York, one of the judges confided that the judges’ panel thought of awarding first prize in the Professional category($50,000) to the Scawthorn-Hofmayer entry, but could not do so due to the Contest rules.
2 “Con Ed” is the electric and gas utility for New York City. At the time, it was the largest electric utility in the US, in terms of wattage.
3 The PJM project was deemed by the US government to be a project vital to US national security.
4 The other two strands would be the work of Shah et al at Stanford, which evolved into the firm of RMS, and the work of Clark, at the firm of AIR. Note that all three strands derive from seminal work by Wiggins, and by Steinbrugge.
5 This methodology has been used to screen over 100,000 buildings in the US for potential seismic hazards, and is the model for similar methodologies in Canada, Turkey, Taiwan and elsewhere. In 1998 I received the Applied Technology Council’s Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Seismic Evaluation of Buildings, for this work.