Joseph Wartman
University of Washington, WA·Engineering
Earthquakes do damage long after the ground stops shaking. In the months and years that follow, landslides become more frequent, threatening roads, homes and recovery efforts.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
post-earthquake landslides
earthquakes
seismic hazard
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Establish a physics-based framework for measuring earthquake-induced hillslope damage, adding geomechanics to New Zealand data gathered after the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake.
- Isolate how climate, geology, seismic shaking, vegetation and topography drive elevated landslide activity after earthquakes, and test hypotheses about how long that activity persists.
- Operate the NHERI RAPID facility, deploying lidar, drones, seismometers and survey instruments to collect high-resolution disaster data archived in DesignSafe to inform hazard models.
More about the research
Researchers have documented this pattern, but they cannot yet explain or predict it from physical principles. These projects combine studies of why weakened hillsides fail with a national facility that collects high-quality field data after disasters.
Why it matters
A physics-based understanding of post-earthquake landslides could help engineers, planners and transportation agencies, such as those in the Pacific Northwest, design more resilient infrastructure and plan recovery after major earthquakes. Open, high-quality disaster data from the RAPID facility could improve hazard simulations and help communities reduce damage from earthquakes, windstorms and other natural hazards.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Julio Ramirez
Purdue University, IN·Engineering
Convene and support NHERI network governance, including the Council, Network Independent Advisory Committee and User Forum, and update the NHERI Science Plan that sets shared research priorities across earthquake, wind and coastal hazards.
Marin Clark
University of Michigan, MI·Earth & Environmental Science
Develop a scientific framework that characterizes cascading land surface hazards, such as landslides that dam rivers and sediment buildup that promotes flooding, and anticipates how they will change.
Hyoungsu Park
University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI·Engineering
Measure how tsunami-driven debris damming increases forces on the first-floor columns of elevated structures, using experiments in the large wave flume at the Oregon State University NHERI facility.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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