The Geotechnical Society of Edmonton is pleased to present the Canadian Geotechnical Society Cross-Canada Lecture Tour featuring Dr. Ellen Rathje.
Date: June 12, 2024
Time: 5:30pm – 8:30pm
Location: Woodvale Facility, Millwood Golf Course
Cost: GSE/CGS Members $30, Students $15, Non-members $40
Click to register for in-person attendance on EventBrite
Abstract
Earthquake-induced landslides represent a significant seismic hazard and a regional-scale assessment is required to fully understand the potential impacts of landslides on distributed infrastructure systems such as pipelines and transportation networks. This presentation describes recent advances in regional-scale landslide assessments that address important issues associated with data-driven characterization at the regional scale, uncertainty and variability, and quantifying the resulting landslides in terms of displacement, size, and direction of movement. These developments are derived within the context of seismic pipeline risk assessments for the State of California using a 10-m digital elevation model, state-wide geotechnical borehole database, state-wide geologic map, and regional groundwater well data, and uncertainties are incorporated via a logic tree approach. Ultimately, the analyses define landslide zone polygons, each of which is characterized by a statistical distribution of the potential landslide size, displacement, and direction given an earthquake scenario.
Bio
Dr. Ellen M. Rathje, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is the Janet S. Cockrell Centennial Chair in Engineering in the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), and a Senior Research Scientist at the UT Bureau of Economic Geology. She is an acknowledged expert in the areas of seismic site response analysis, seismic slope stability, induced seismicity, and field reconnaissance after earthquakes. Dr. Rathje is a founding member and previous Co-Chair of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association, and currently the Principal Investigator for the DesignSafe-ci.org cyberinfrastructure that supports research in natural hazards engineering. She has been honored with the 2022 Peck Lecture Award from the ASCE Geo-Institute, the 2018 William B. Joyner Lecture Award from the Seismological Society of America and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the 2010 Huber Research Prize from the ASCE. She was elected Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2016.