NHERI at UC San Diego Hosts Turkish Delegation
Published on May 9, 2024
The NHERI at UC San Diego experimental facility recently hosted two teams of delegates from the Turkish Ministry of the Environment, Urban Planning, and Climate Change, and the Turkish National Natural Hazards Insurance Organization.
Professor Joel Conte, director of the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center at UCSD and NHERI principal investigator, provided the guests a guided tour of LHPOST, the world’s largest outdoor shake table – along with an overview of its history and capabilities.
Turkey suffered a series of strong earthquakes during February 2023 and is still reeling from its devastating effects. With a mission to improve the country’s seismic resilience, the visiting delegates – consisting of administrators, engineers, and actuarial scientists – are tasked with developing plans for enhancing Turkey’s research and development infrastructure in earthquake engineering as well as improving the Ministry’s rapid post-event damage assessment and recovery procedures.
The delegates also visited UCLA and the NHERI RAPID facility at the University of Washington as part of their expedition to the U.S.
“The Turkish teams were impressed by the capabilities of the LHPOST6 and pleased to see its impact on advancing earthquake disaster mitigation and prevention, and strong contributions towards gradually increasing the seismic resilience of the built environment around the world,” Conte said.
Visit the facility website for information about NSF-funded NHERI at UC San Diego.
