The full program of events at 12NCEE will include some 600 technical papers and over 35 special sessions, as well as a series of lectures, meetings, tours, networking events, and workshops. 

For the full program, including speakers, paper titles and abstracts, and session times and locations, please visit the 12NCEE Online Session Guide.

Full papers can be accessed by registered attendees in the Attendee Portal. Find your personal link to log into the Attendee Portal in the email with the subject line "The 12NCEE Attendee Portal is Now Available!"

Below, find an overview of the Plenary Sessions and Technical and Special Sessions.

Plenary Sessions

Plenary sessions include the Welcome and Opening Plenary, the 2022 William B. Joyner Lecture and the 2022 Distinguished Lecture.

Welcome and Opening Plenary: Advancing Seismic Safety in Utah

The Honorable Spencer J. Cox, Governor of Utah

The March 2020 Magna earthquake was a potent reminder that Utah’s buildings and infrastructure are not yet prepared for a major earthquake event on the Wasatch Fault. Although earthquake risk mitigation has been ongoing in Utah for decades, efforts to advance seismic safety throughout the state have gained new momentum in recent years.

Utah Governor Spencer J. Cox will deliver the keynote at this Opening Plenary session, followed by a moderated roundtable discussion with state representatives and advocates for seismic safety. Speakers will discuss the significant advancements Utah has made in areas such as conducting seismic retrofits and developing URM risk reduction strategies, and highlight the next steps for future action. The session will close with a welcome from the EERI President and 12NCEE Organizing Committee Chairs with an introduction to the week ahead.

Roundtable Moderator: Lisa Grow Sun, Professor of Law, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University

Roundtable Speakers:

• V. Lowry Snow, Utah State Representative
• Clare Collard, Utah State Representative
• Jessica Chappell, Engineering Manager, The Haskell Company
• Robert Grow, Founding Chair Emeritus, Envision Utah

William B. Joyner Lecture: The Future of Earthquake Impact Estimation

Dr. David J. Wald, Research Geophysicist, United States Geological Survey; Editor-in-Chief, Earthquake Spectra

The 2022 William B. Joyner lecture will feature a combined seismological and earthquake engineering view of future earthquake impact, response, and recovery tools and assessments. Impact estimation requires considering uncertain models and data since the main components—namely shaking, exposure, and vulnerabilities—entail inherent uncertainties. Since actionable response or planning requires confidence in our results, improvements in our loss calculations will require continued seismological and engineering collaboration and expanded tools to reduce modeling uncertainties. Future rapid initial impact and secondary hazard modeled estimates will be holistically integrated with crowd-sourced and remotely sensed observations for a more accurate view of the consequences. Further advancements in remote sensing, rapid in-situ monitoring and impact reporting, and machine learning will allow for innovative data-fusion strategies that integrate with existing models and significantly improve the accuracy and spatial resolution of rapid shaking and loss estimates. In addition, some key new contributing datasets—if combined—could radically improve our loss estimate capabilities. Among others, such datasets include global building footprints and inventories, better ShakeMap macroseismic constraints, early reports of fatalities for Bayesian updating, and structural health monitoring. Many of the same tools and strategies needed for real-time loss estimates are also applicable for long-term loss and risk assessments.

Distinguished Lecture: From Ductility to Repairability: Evolution of Building Design in the Wake of the Christchurch Earthquake

Dr. Ken Elwood, Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of Auckland; Chief Engineer (Building Resilience), Ministry for Business, Innovation, and Employment, and Earthquake Commission, New Zealand

New Zealand and many other countries around the world adopted ductility-based design concepts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The adoption of these design concepts are likely the single most important advancement in our design philosophy in terms of protecting life safety in future earthquakes. Ductility, however, cannot be achieved without damage to the structure and its contents. Recent earthquakes have openly challenged the engineering community as to whether our focus on ductility has delivered what society intrinsically expects from its buildings during and after strong earthquakes. Recognizing that building design is best driven by observations from real earthquakes, we will use the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake as a case study to explore if it is time for another fundamental shift in our approach to building design; from ductility to repairability.

How we design and construct buildings will clearly influence building performance in future earthquakes, which will in turn influence outcomes for occupants (injuries and deaths), as well as for the buildings themselves (demolition, repairs, abandonment). But it is the economic, environmental and social impacts resulting (in part) from these human and building outcomes which leave a lasting impression on our communities. Managing these impacts from future earthquakes should be the driver behind future changes to how we design buildings. Eleven years after the Christchurch earthquake we are now in a better position to appreciate such impacts including business losses, insurance costs and delays, environmental impacts, urban blight, and wellbeing. We will review some of these impacts and reconsider if our building design targets are suitable for managing these impacts in future earthquakes. We argue a need to change our focus from just life-safety to serviceability in frequent earthquakes and repairability in design level ground motions. Component deformation limits for concrete buildings which enable structural repair without loss of structural safety will be discussed and the repairability of current structural designs will be assessed.

Technical and Special Sessions

Earth Science and Ground Motions

• Seismic and Site Response Data Collection
• Earthquake Hazard and Design Ground Motions
• User Needs for USGS National Seismic Hazard Models (NSHMs)
• Ground Motion Modeling
• Ground Motion Modeling—Site Response
• Ground Motion Simulation, Validation, and Utilization

Geotechnical Engineering

• Coordinated Study of Fault Hazard, Seismic Hazard, Site Response, and Liquefaction in the Southern San Francisco Bay Area
• Next-Generation Liquefaction Database and Models
• Liquefaction: From Triggering to Societal Impacts
• Geotechnical Applications for Professional Practice and Performance-Based Design
• Soils, Foundations, Earth Retention Systems, Underground Infrastructure
• Liquefaction and Ground Failures
• Numerical Modeling and Advances in Non-Linear Modeling Tools
• Soil-Structure Interaction

Risk/Loss Modeling, Planning, and Response

• Hazards and Functional Recovery of High Occupancy Facilities
• Fragility and Vulnerability Models I
• Fragility and Vulnerability Models II
• Insurance Applications and Catastrophe Models
• Risk and Loss Assessment
• Risk and Loss Assessment (Real-time)
• Socioeconomic and Environmental Consequences

Social Science, Public Health, and Public Policy

• Using Surveys after a Disaster to Understand Business and Community Resilience
• Addressing the Public Health and Healthcare Impacts of Earthquakes: New Approaches at the Intersection of Public Health and Earthquake Engineering
• The HayWired Scenario: Societal Consequences
• Climate Action: A Seismic Safety Opportunity?
• Resilient Housing Ecosystem Assessment Tool and Strategies
• Seismic Sleuthing: Navigating FEMA Programs to Understand and Reduce Your Seismic Vulnerability
• FEMA Natural Hazard Retrofit Program Toolkit—Overview, How to Use it, and Pitfalls to Avoid
• Advancing School Earthquake Safety in Our Communities
• Implementing the “Whole Community” Approach to Disaster Resilience
• Wasatch Front URM Risk Reduction Strategy: A Model for Moving Mitigation Forward (Session Sponsored by ATC)
• Functional Recovery as Public Policy: How it Started, How it's Going, and Where it Goes from Here
• Equity, Resilience and Policymaking
• Policy Tools & Assessments

Structural Engineering Practice

• Retrofit of the Salt Lake City Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple (Session Designed and Sponsored by Forell | Elsesser)
• No Longer Just a Research Idea—Rocking Technologies as a Practical Approach to Achieving Functional Recovery
• Does the Building Code Adequately Protect the Wasatch Front Communities from a Wasatch Fault Earthquake?
• Challenging the Code: Using Problem-Focused Studies to Improve Seismic Design Practice (Session Sponsored by ATC)
• Blind Prediction Contests and the Essential Insights They Provide: Part 1
• Blind Prediction Contests and the Essential Insights They Provide: Part 2
• Structural Seismic Codes and Standards
• Bringing Design for Functional Recovery into State of Practice (Session Sponsored by ATC)
• Seismic Design of High-Rise Buildings
• Seismic Evaluation and Design of Nonbuilding and Nonstructural Systems
• Seismic Retrofit of Existing Structures
• Innovative Structural Seismic Systems
• Structural Engineering Practice Lightning Session

Structural Engineering Research

• A Discussion with Multiple Perspectives on the Current and Future State of Seismic Structural Health Monitoring in the US (Session Designed and Sponsored by Kinemetrics)
• Recovery Categories and Target Recovery Times for Development of a Functional Recovery Framework
• New Design Approaches for Mass Timber Buildings in the United States
• Ground Motion Characterization and Seismic Demands
• Analysis and Design of Bridge Structures
• Performance of Nonstructural Components and Systems
• Performance of Masonry Structures
• Advances in Performance Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Walls
• Advances in Performance Assessment of Structures I
• Advances in Performance Assessment of Structures II
• Advances in Performance Assessment of Structures III
• Advances in Performance Based Seismic Design
• Design, Testing and Construction of Timber Structures
• Repair and Retrofit of Structures I
• Repair and Retrofit of Structures II
• High-Performance Engineering Materials
• Advances in Seismic Isolation
• Novel Structural Systems and Low Damage Technologies I
• Novel Structural Systems and Low Damage Technologies II
• Nonlinear Modeling of Damage in Structures
• Collapse and Vulnerability Assessment of Building Structures
• Advances in Simulation and Testing of Steel Buildings
• Advances in Modeling and Testing of Concrete Structures
• Experimental Testing of Structures and Components
• Experimental Testing and Hybrid Simulation of Structures
• Community Resilience and Functional Recovery

Transportation and Lifelines

• Seismic Risk Assessment Methodologies and Open-Source Tools for Natural Gas Infrastructure
• Seismic Performance of Pipes and Pipeline Systems
• Seismic Investigations of Transportation Systems and Buildings

Multidisciplinary

• Machine Learning Applications in Earthquake Engineering: Hope, Hype or Hindrance (A Debate)
• Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Addressing Equity in Disaster Risk
• Earthquake Reconnaissance with Advanced Technologies
• The 2021 Mw 7.2 Nippes, Haiti Earthquake: Observations at the Intersection of Earthquake and Geotechnical Engineering, Reconnaissance Missions, Response and Recovery, and Social Sciences
• Lessons Learned from Earthquake Reconnaissance
• Coordination of Post-Earthquake Reconnaissance by the Research and Professional Communities
• YMC Effective Writing Workshop for Young Professionals and Academics
• The 2020 Magna, Utah, Earthquake: The Event, Its Impacts, and Implications to Hazard and Risk Along the Wasatch Front
• Earthquake Response in Small Town USA: Lessons from the 2020 Magna UT Earthquake
• Facilitating Cloud Computing in Natural Hazards via DesignSafe Use-Cases
• Leveraging the Virtual Classroom: Inspiring the Next Generation of Earthquake Engineers
• Novel Post-Earthquake Assessment Analysis and Modeling Techniques
• Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence: Earthquake Engineering Applications
• Machine Learning Applications in Structural Engineering