On August 25th, 2022, a focus SWADE workshop was held on water infrastructure resilience. Participants included researchers from SWADE, Dr. Craig Davis, and retd. Chief resilience officer from LADWP and a featured talk from a visiting scholar, Dr. Selcuk Toprak from Turkey (Gebze Technical University) with expertise in water systems resilience. The workshop focused on engaging community partners in an open discussion about extending resilience technologies, e.g., to earthquake-resistant pipe joints. This workshop also touched upon attaining community outreach discussions on a global scale and further extended our understanding of the physical water pipe infrastructure.
This visit by Prof. Selcuk Toprak as part of the Erasmus+ programme of European Commission will give opportunity to learn and discuss different topics which lead to resilient distributed infrastructure systems against various disaster risks. It is anticipated that the interactions contribute to the modellings and innovative solutions to a wide-range of natural and technological hazards. The topics of discussion may cover the recent developments in disaster risk assessment, modeling and management; seismic vulnerability assessment of pipelines; risk assessments for distributed infrastructure systems; and approaches for seismic resilience. All these topics are linked to creation of resilient cities / resilient lifelines which may require the satisfaction of the following items i) consideration of different critical subsystems (e.g., drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater) individually and together at local and system level, ii) interactions between different organizations such as local governments, water districts, and regulatory agencies, iii) use of smart technologies and recent developments to deal with various issues in the systems. In addition, this visit and activities are expected to trigger joint work and projects.
Featured Speaker Bio:
Professor Toprak received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY and worked at USGS, Menlo Park, CA for about 3 years as a research civil engineer. He collaborated with researchers in US, Japan, New Zealand, and many countries in Europe. He is currently working at Gebze Technical University, Turkey. He authored or co-authored over 110 technical publications. His research interests cover buried pipeline systems, lifeline earthquake engineering, geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, engineering for large, geographically distributed systems, and geographic information technologies and database management. He served as an advisor on numerous projects. Professor Toprak is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers, and ISSMGE Turkish Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. He developed geographical information systems and damage analysis procedures for buried pipeline systems in areas vulnerable to earthquakes and other natural disasters. His studies lead to strategies to predict and reduce damage during earthquakes.
Website: https://www.gtu.edu.tr/tr/personel/2397/35261728/display.aspx
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