Special Issue on Selected Papers from 9th CUEE

Abstract

The 9th International Conference on Urban Earthquake Engineering (9th CUEE) and the 4th Asia Conference on Earthquake Engineering (4th ACEE) were jointly held on March 6-8, 2012 in Tokyo, as a part of the research activities of the Center for Urban Earthquake Engineering (CUEE), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. The conference featured state-of-the-art technical presentations on various themes relevant to urban earthquake engineering, followed by special sessions addressing the 11th March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami that resulted in catastrophic damage and an estimated death toll of 20,000. The conference attracted 465 participants from 31 countries, and disseminated 283 papers. The board members of the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) decided to publish special issues of JDR, selecting papers from the above joint conference, for the purpose of mainly updating status of Japan’s research/technology. The present issue is on the fields of engineering seismology and geotechnical engineering, including extraordinary ground shaking and liquefactions that affected wide areas during the March 11 incident. Other issues such as those on buildings and infrastructures are also planned. The 8 manuscripts selected and managed by the JDR Guest Editors address the following topics: - Array observations of ground shaking - Large peak ground acceleration and site amplification - Attenuation of the seismic wave - Impact against the water-supply outages - Liquefaction in a river levee on soft cohesive ground - Spread foundation performance affecting superstructure - Performance of piled raft foundation with grid-form ground improvement - Liquefaction of levee body and seepage control The Guest Editors as well as JDR board members thank the authors for their contributions and revisions. They also acknowledge gratefully the reviewers for their invaluable comments on the manuscripts.