NSF Award Supports StEER Network

August 14, 2018

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a 2-year EAGER grant (CMMI 1841667) to the Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) Network. StEER’s mission is to deepen the structural natural hazards engineering (NHE) community’s capacity for reliable post-event reconnaissance by (1) promoting community-driven standards, best practices, and training for RAPID field work, (2) coordinating official event responses in collaboration with other stakeholders and reconnaissance groups; and (3) representing structural engineering within the wider extreme events (EE) consortium in geotechnical engineering (GEER) and social sciences (SSEER) to foster greater potentials for truly interdisciplinary reconnaissance. StEER will also work closely with the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) RAPID facility and cyberinfrastructure Reconnaissance Portal to more effectively leverage these resources to benefit StEER missions.

StEER will rely upon the engagement of the broad NHE community, including creating institutional linkages with dedicated liaisons to existing post-event communities and partnerships with other key stakeholders.  Partnerships that leverage geographical distributed capacity will be initiated from the project’s three primary nodes located at the University of Notre Dame (Coordinating Node), University of Florida (Atlantic/Gulf Regional Node), and University of California, Berkeley (Pacific Regional Node).

The project’s organizational structure includes a governance layer comprised of core leadership with Associate Directors for each of the primary hazards as well as cross-cutting areas of Assessment Technologies and Data Standards.  The project leadership team is as follows:

Tracy Kijewski-Correa (PI),University of Notre Dame, will serve as StEER Director responsible with overseeing the design and operationalization of the network. She has led reconnaissance after major hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, that included damage assessments and longitudinal recovery studies with human subjects. She coordinated the large-scale RAPID response to the three major hurricanes in the 2017 season. Kijewski-Correa will also serve as the liaison to ISSEER.

Khalid Mosalam (co-PI), University of California, Berkeley, will serve as StEER Associate Director for Seismic Hazards, leading StEER’s Pacific Regional node and serving as primary liaison to the Earthquake Engineering community. He has been involved in many earthquake reconnaissance efforts in the US and abroad including those in Japan, Turkey, Italy, China and Haiti. Mosalam will also serve as the liaison to GEER.

David O. Prevatt (co-PI), University of Florida, will serve as StEER Associate Director for Wind Hazards, leading StEER’s Atlantic/Gulf Regional node and serving as primary liaison to the Wind Engineering community. Prevatt’s structural engineering and forensic engineering background enabled him to lead major NSF-RAPID and ASCE-sponsored post-tornado damage investigations following the Tuscaloosa and Joplin tornadoes in 2011, as well as major hurricanes in the US and abroad. Prevatt will also serve as the liaison to SSEER.

Ian Robertson (co-PI), University of Hawai’i at Manoa, will serve as StEER Associate Director for Assessment Technologies, guiding StEER’s development of a robust approach to damage assessment across the hazards. Robertson has experience in coastal engineering for tsunami and storm surge effects, in part through post-event reconnaissance after tsunamis in Samoa, Chile and Japan, and after Hurricane Katrina. Robertson will also serve as the liaison to the NHERI RAPID EF and the NHERI NC.

David Roueche (co-PI), Auburn University, will serve as StEER Associate Director for Data Standards, ensuring StEER processes deliver reliable and standardized reconnaissance data. Roueche has led or participated in over 10 post-tornado and post-hurricane damage investigations. Following the three major hurricanes in 2017, Roueche led efforts to standardize data collection and curation methodologies in the post-hurricane damage investigations. Roueche will also serve as the liaison to NHERI DesignSafe-CI.

Khalid Mosalam notes that as the StEER network is built, he "looks forward to reaching out and working with colleagues in the earthquake engineering and multi-hazards community to be better connected and prepared to deploy and gather critical reconnaissance data after an extreme event."

Opportunities to join StEER and participate in its Steering Committee, Working Groups, and visioning activities will be announced later this year. In the meantime, queries can be directed to admin@steer.network