What's New
Table 1: Tsunami load to seismic capacity building height parity and threshold for Washington locations.
The Journal of Structural Engineering (JSE) awarded the Chock et al.'s "Tsunami-Resilient Building Design Considerations for Coastal Communities of Washington, Oregon, and California” as their 2018 Best Journal Paper in the Structural Hazards category.
The paper, published in August 2018 and coauthored by Dr. Yong Wei (JISAO/PMEL), was selected by a committee composed of Associate Editors from about 300 papers accepted for publication in JSE last year.
In this paper, the authors provide guidance on implementing the ASCE 7-16 tsunami design provisions by state and local jurisdictions on the west coast, and connect the technical considerations of structural engineering with community resilience objectives and land use zoning coordination. For Risk Category II buildings in California, Oregon and Washington, the paper finds that the current seismic design systemic capacity of buildings will be sufficiently strong to resist the overall tsunami design load. However, coastal buildings in several locations in Oregon and Southern Washington would not have sufficient seismic design strength to resist tsunami loads; for these locations, the authors stress the importance of implementing zoning polices and structural resiliency through tsunami strengthening (Table 1).
PMEL in the News
Live account of updates from Tuesday about the latest on weather conditions, outages and closures from throughout the Puget Sound region. Nick Bond is quoted.
Nick Bond is interviewed on KUOW about what's next with the weather.
For those who wonder what the Bering Sea will be like decades from now, last year was a glimpse of the future. Join Phyllis Stabeno and Tom Van Pelt on KYUK, Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
Feature Publication
Humpback whale preparing for a foraging dive in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.
It’s unclear when the human fascination with the voices of humpback whales began, but with the release of the album “Songs of the Humpback Whale” in 1970, humpbacks became arguably the most listened to whales in the world. But humpback whales do more than sing: they also produce a series of vocalizations known as “calls” or “social calls”. While song is produced only by males, calls are produced by males and females of all ages, and are thought to play a critical role in the life history of... more