Tom O'Rourke

Thomas R Briggs Professor of Engineering Emeritus,
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Next Generation Hazard Resilient Infrastructure
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Friday, February 24, 2023 - 4:30 pm

Location: Whitaker Lab 303, Lehigh University,5 E. Packer Avenue, Bethlehem, PA

Tom O’Rourke is the Thomas R. Briggs Professor of Engineering Emeritus in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Distinguished Member of ASCE, International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Member of the Mexican Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He authored or co-authored over 430 technical publications, and has received numerous awards for his research. His research interests cover geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, underground construction technologies, engineering for large, geographically distributed systems, and geographic information technologies and database management.

Next Generation Hazard Resilient Infrastructure. Resilient underground infrastructure can accommodate large ground deformation from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, adjacent construction, and subsidence. Professor O’Rourke will describe how ten new pipeline and conduit systems have been developed and commercialized using a protocol of large-scale tests and fault rupture experiments. The development and validation of analytical models for the soil-structure interaction of these systems are also described. Examples are used to illustrate the composition and performance of hazard resilient infrastructure. Next steps in the development of this technology are discussed, which include the incorporation of smart sensors.