The UK Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) has decided to mount a reconnaissance mission to the Samoa Islands region following the earthquake of magnitude 8.0MW, which occurred on the 29th September 2009 and subsequent tsunami. A team of six people, (coastal and earthquake engineers), are planning to leave for Apia, Samoa on the 3rd November 2009 and spend 6 days in the disaster zone to conduct a technical evaluation of the earthquake and tsunami and carry out an assessment of the effectiveness of protection measures by surveying the damage and interviewing local government officials and survivors of the event. The four academic members of the team comprise the PI (Dr Alison Hunt-Raby, a Lecturer and coastal engineer from the University of Plymouth), the team leader (Dr Emily So, a Chartered Civil Engineer who will be employed as a researcher at the University of Plymouth) and two researchers from University College London (Tristan Robinson, a Teaching Fellow and Tristan Lloyd, a PhD student, both tsunami specialists). The further team members are practicing engineers with expertise in seismology, tsunami modelling and geotechnical engineering.This application seeks financial support to help meet the travel costs of the participating academic team members and to aid EEFIT support entry of collected field data (photographs and observations) into an improved version of the Virtual Disaster Viewer system developed following the EPSRC funded China Earthquake mission in 2008 (Grant Ref: EP/G030111/1). This platform will allow members of the global earthquake engineering community, especially to review and provide their assessment of damage by comparing before and after satellite images of the affected areas and to remotely and in real-time upload their own field data as it is collected for rapid dissemination. Dissemination through the improved Virtual Disaster Viewer system will increase the effectiveness of earthquake reporting, promoting awareness of earthquake risk. It will also be a shared repository for observations made by several international teams of experts. Hence, this initiative will continue to strengthen existing, and foster new relationships between researchers and engineers in EEFIT and the worldwide earthquake engineering community.

Pressure on urban spaces is increasing year on year. At the start of the nineteenth century 3% of the world's population lived in cities, after 2007 more than 50% will do so. The trend presents us with a number of difficult challenges resulting from climate change, population growth, disease and terrorism that, if not met, forebode dreadful consequences for health, social cohesion and economic stability:How to manage and adapt our current urban space and infrastructure to cope with the loading and threats placed on and against them?How to design, engineer, expand and maintain the new class of eco-cities?How to promote these ideas to governments, industry and investment funds?The UK is vulnerable to natural and technological disasters both within its borders and elsewhere in the world. The principal natural disasters affecting the nation are windstorms and floods (both river and coastal), both of which have triggered major losses in recent years. In January 1990, damage due to Winter Storm Daria cost insurers 3.37 billion, making it the UK's most expensive weather event, while in 2007 floods inundated 48,000 homes and 7,300 businesses and cost insurers 3 billion. Biological and technological disasters also have major cost implications, with losses associated with the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak reaching 8 billion, and the total cost of the 2006 Buncefield explosion set at 1 billion. Because of the London reinsurance market's (and particularly Lloyd's) central role in reinsuring against natural catastrophes all over the world, the country is also vulnerable to major disasters abroad. For example, the UK reinsurance market's share of the US$60 billion insured losses from Hurricane Katrina (New Orleans) contributed to the country's worst trade deficit on record in August 2005. Looking ahead, by 2080, UK flood losses could be as high as 22 billion, 15 times higher than they are today, while a predicted 20 percent rise in the more powerful winter storms, could see a substantial increase in wind-related losses. On the technological front, the cost to the UK economy of an H5N1 pandemic could be a GDP reduction of five percent or more, while the total cost of a major nuclear accident has been estimated at somewhere between 83 billion and 5.4 trillion. The UK is now firmly within an international marketplace: vulnerabilities arise not only from events and trends within the UK, but also from economic and environmental disasters abroad. Our strongly developed, sophisticated and consumer-focussed urban society has become increasingly complex. Ordinary people, businesses and public services rely upon a deep hierarchy of inter-dependent supply chains and industries in order to function in the way that they do. With this increased complexity has come increased risk and vulnerability. This vulnerability is, in part, exacerbated by population density in urban conglomerations and the resultant pressure upon space. The programme focuses upon two key themes: sustainability and resilience. Sustainability addresses the maintenance of an ecological system (atmosphere, water, the food chain) whilst at the same time enabling human development of the urban environment and the surrounding hinterland. Resilience is a newer concept dealing with the issue of how to mitigate the effects of environmental disasters and terrorism, incorporating seismic and volcanic hazard (earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides), flood risk, the spread and control of disease (water, air and animal borne), security and situational awareness. This includes four key ideas: rapidity (how rapidly a response can be coordinated and put into effect), resourcefulness (the importance of having multiple ways of tackling a problem), redundancy (to better absorb the effect of disasters, over-engineering to protect against failure of system components) and robustness (simple robust engineering: building stuff that stands up irrespective of what is thrown at it.

Earthquake reconnaissance plays an invaluable role in earthquake engineering, as it enables the collection of perishable data on building performance that are otherwise unobtainable. Such data can be used to prepare damage statistics, calibrate and validate engineering models and crucially, to decide what design and/or construction deficiencies lead to inadequate structural performance. This research goes beyond the immediate needs of engineers as it can provide the evidence base for the development of new disaster risk reduction policies and mitigation practices worldwide. In the UK, earthquake field investigations have been conducted by EEFIT since 1982, reporting on the damage observed and inspiring research into building standards for earthquake resistant design and assessment. This research will use the experience gained in EP/I01778X/1 to continue and expand important work in reducing and eventually eradicating the risk of significant death, damage to the economy, and social upheaval resulting from earthquakes. This grant will enable UK based academics to continue to participate in earthquake field investigations conducted by EEFIT and to improve coordination with international equivalents in the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and Europe. grow UK earthquake risk reduction activities, improve the dissemination of EEFIT Mission findings and further increase their impact. Not only will this research continue to collect valuable information in the aftermath of a disaster, but it will also develop new methods of collecting and interpreting this data as well and further develop standard international disaster data collection protocols. This data will be housed in a unique future proof repository that will allow researchers and other stakeholders to easily access and use the information This is important as not only will it enable the UK to stay at the forefront of earthquake engineering research, but it will assist donor countries and other organizations to more accurately access the severity of the disaster and therefore to better target the correct amount of resource for relief and rebuilding efforts.