YeongAe Heo, assistant professor in the department of civil engineering, was part of a committee that worked on a set of guidelines to identify when multihazard considerations are necessary when making structural engineering decisions.
Heo is vice chair of the Structural Engineering Institute’s Multihazard Mitigation (MHM) Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Michele Barbato, professor at University of California, Davis, is chair of the committee and Hussam Mahmoud, associate professor at Colorado State University, is the secretary. They also worked with Elaina Sutley, assistant professor at University of Kansas, and Shutao Xing, a structural engineer at the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Multihazard conditions include natural disasters such as earthquakes followed by fires or hurricane winds followed by storm surges. Heo and colleagues also plan to look at research opportunities to help with the development of future structural design codes and standards.
The team’s initiative was selected for funding from the 2020 Futures Fund. The Structural Engineering Institute, in partnership with the American Society of Civil Engineers Foundation, supports proposals for new strategic initiatives that benefit the structural engineering profession.