Marshal Fire, Colorado: Field Reconnaissance Overvirew

I hosted Dr. Brad Wham as part of the ongoing NHERI GSC webinar series on reconnaissance research and data collection.

Dr. Brad Wham is a civil and geotechnical engineering researcher specializing in lifeline infrastructure resilience, pipeline performance, and earthquake engineering. Based at the University of Nevada, Reno, he leads research that informs the design and protection of buried utilities against extreme ground deformation events.

Dr. Wham’s work examines how buried pipelines respond to seismic and geotechnical hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, and tunneling. Through full-scale testing and computational modeling, his studies have advanced understanding of jointed and polymer pipe behavior under large ground movements, providing data crucial for modern infrastructure design standards.

Hurricane Otis Post-Disaster Assessment

I hosted Juan Antonio Balderrama Garcia Mendez, Associate Professor of Instruction at The University of Texas at Arlington, as part of the ongoing NHERI GSC webinar series on reconnaissance research and data collection.

In this talk, he discussed how his team assessed the impacts of Hurricane Otis, a Category 5 hurricane that made devastating landfall near the Mexican city of Acapulco in October 2023.

Dr. Balderrama is an associate professor of electrical engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. His academic work focuses on advancing performance-based wind design, risk-consistent structural engineering, and interdisciplinary approaches to infrastructure resilience.

You can watch the talk on the NHERI ECO YouTube channel.