I was part of EEFIT's 2016 mission to Ecuador following the Mw 7.8 Muisne Earthquake. The earthquake caused an estimated 668 fatalities, 6,300 severe injuries and widespread damage in the northern Ecuadorian province of Manabi. The EEFIT team visited the area for around two weeks.
Objectives
我们的目标是：
- carry out a general assessment of damage to the building stock and other structures
- 记录并观察土壤失败，滑坡，液化和断层
- 获得测量并获取数据
- 开发一个视图在响应事件
- 通过采访该地区的人们，调查灾难的社会经济影响
部署在厄瓜多尔的团队由哈里特·斯通（Harriette Stone），贝叶斯·艾哈迈德（Bayes Ahmed）（伦敦大学学院），尼娜·吉罗斯科娃（Nina Jirouskova）（帝国学院）和我本人（剑桥大学）组成。我们都在英国从事我们的博士学位论文。该团队还包括塞巴斯蒂安·卡明斯基（Sebastian Kaminski）和豪尔赫·洛佩兹（Jorge Lopez），Arup的地震工程师，以及来自再保险经纪人Guy Carpenter的Guillermo Franco。
我们一起涵盖了几个学科，包括结构和岩土工程，社会科学和风险管理。
Our report contains many analyses of the vast amount of data collected, a large number of photographs of the damage observed, and discussions on the patterns we observed.
Key findings
- 在没有砌体填充物的非工程，低层钢筋混凝土建筑物中看到了非常高的结构损伤。通过几次步行调查，我们收集了有价值的信息，这些信息可用于产生脆弱性功能以改善我们的地震风险模型。
- Following discussions in the refuge shelters, it was found that most of the families that had been affected had lived in multi-storey buildings made of reinforced concrete or reinforced concrete combined with timber and bamboo. Following the earthquake most wanted to relocate into single-storey buildings that were made of lighter materials such as timber and bamboo.
- 我们看到许多实例，由于先前的洪水，在主要冲击时，河流水平升高和高地下水位加剧了岩土技术的故障。
- Liquefaction induced damage was widespread, particularly lateral spreading along river banks.
Collaborating with the British Geological Survey (BGS), we were able to pinpoint many of these failures using innovative satellite imagery.
We conducted a ground-truthing exercise to validate that this type of remote sensing information helps to quickly obtain an estimate of landslides in the affected areas. We also saw some instances in which these forecasts failed, which will be useful to identify the limitations of these methods.
独特的学习经历
The EEFIT mission was during the first year of my PhD and it provided me with an invaluable opportunity to observe earthquake damage, learn more about disciplines related to earthquake engineering, and to begin to appreciate the difficulties of disaster response and emergency relief. In addition, I was able to use several case histories for my PhD research.
与其他专业人员并肩工作，扩大我在英国及其他地区工作的地震社区的参与也很棒。
我感谢我的博士主管鼓励我申请这项任务的一部分，并为我提供了这个绝佳的机会。我强烈建议其他人也这样做。
Read EEFIT's Ecuador report.