The 4th International IASPEI/IAEE Symposium on the Effects of Surface Geology on Seismic Motion (ESG) will be held at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 23 ? 26 August 2011. Approximately 250 scientists and engineers from around the world are expected to attend this symposium to present the latest results on how local site conditions affect ground motion induced by earthquakes. Since the 3rd Symposium in Grenoble in 2006, there have been significant earthquakes in Japan, China, Italy, Haiti, Chile, Mexico, and New Zealand that have provided a wealth of data. In particular, the 2010 Darfield event in New Zealand and the 2011 Tohoku event in Japan induced widespread liquefaction. Analysis of the data from these events and dissemination of the results to larger communities will aid in the mitigation of damaging effects from earthquakes in the future. This conference will bring together an international community of earthquake scientists and engineers. It will promote an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and provide everyone with a perspective on the current state-of-art research into the fundamental problems associated with quantifying the effects of the local site geology. The papers presented at the conference will be published on a CD-ROM and distributed to all registered participants. The papers will also be available through the conference website to the general public.
ESG4 Conference at UCSB 4th IASPEI / IAEE International Symposium: Effects of Surface Geology on Strong Ground Motion Executive Summary: The 4th International IASPEI/IAEE Symposium on the Effects of Surface Geology on Strong Ground Motion (ESG4) was held at the University of California Santa Barbara from 23 – 26 August 2011. (http://esg4.eri.ucsb.edu/) The first three Symposia were held in 1992 in Odawara, Japan, in 1998 in Yokohama, Japan, and in 2006 in Grenoble, France. The ESG working group was created jointly by IASPE (International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior) and IAEE (International Association of Earthquake Engineering) almost 30 years ago to promote a greater understanding and analysis of the effects of surface geology on ground motion. The meeting was generously supported by the NSF, the USGS, the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Kinemetrics, IASPEI and the Earth Research Institute and Department of Earth Science at the University of California. More than 200 researchers and practitioners, including more than 20 students, attended the Symposium. The Symposium at UCSB consisted of a pre-meeting NEES (NSF Network Earthquake Engineering Simulation) workshop, 16 plenary sessions, and a half-day workshop on the Vs30 debate. The invited speakers were an international group of scientists and engineers who spoke on diverse topics from the state-of-the-art ground motion research and to engineering practice. Papers submitted to the Symposium were presented in poster sessions with generous time allowances each day. There were 124 papers submitted from 16 countries. The proceedings of the Symposium have been released on CD-ROM and are available through the website. Professor Ralph Archuleta of the Department of Earth Science at UCSB served as the Chairman of the Symposium. Dr. Sandra Seale, researcher at the Earth Research Institute, was de facto head of the local organizing committee: Archuleta, Dr. Jamison Steidl and staff from the Earth Research Institute. Details of the Symposium, including downloads of the papers, plenary talks, events, and photographs, are found at the URL http://esg4.eri.ucsb.edu/. At ESG4 the Working Group on the Effects of Surface Geology on Strong Motions, led by Professors Hiroshe Kawase of the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University and Jacobo Bielak, of Carnegie Mellon University, decided that the next ESG Symposium would be held in Taiwan, Republic of China. Professor Kuo-Liang Wen of the Institute of Geophysics, National Central University, will be the Chair of the Symposium.
