ROTARY INTERNATIONAL AND ITS ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL DISASTER RELIEF AND DEVELOPMENT

Rotary has launched DRRAG, the new Disaster Relief Rotary Action Group. DRRAG is designed to help Rotarians contribute to preparedness in a timely and effective manner before a disaster and to participate in response, relief, recovery and rebuilding coordination after a disaster: to help save lives, alleviate suffering, stimulate recovery and mitigate hazards.

This paper by DRRAG CEO Lee Malany summarizes the vision and scope of DRRAG.

Comments by LeGrand L. Malany
Distinguished Panelist for 1st North American Rotary Disaster Workshop
A concept paper prepared for the 1st North American Rotary Disaster Workshop, New Orleans, Louisiana January 11-13, 2007

ABSTRACT: Polio Plus proved that Rotary can be a leading, catalytic and effective global force to improving world conditions. This paper explores another important and needed global focus for which Rotary is uniquely qualified and structured – Disaster Relief and Development. This paper focuses on two dynamics regarding disaster relief and development which are exceptionally suited to Rotary: (a) providing the local bonding to make international relief and development programs sustainable in developing nations; and, (b) providing the worldwide business participation management structure for effective and coordinated private sector action and capacity building assistance to developing countries.

This paper addresses the potential role of Rotary in relief and development within the context of the international arena rather that a national one. Although there are great similarities between relief and development in other countries (as the parallelisms between Katrina in the Southern United States and the October 8, 2006, earthquake in Northern Pakistan shows), I think our initial discussion should address national and international relief and development separately, at least initially [...].

Use of High-Performance parallel supercomputers to conduct probabilistic seismic response analysis of a building structure

NEESit featured my Ph.D. research (see pdf) on their website (NEESit website). We used structural analysis programs to make an earthquake collapse analysis of a building. Such software are extremely useful in the seismic assessment of existing buildings which were in many cases designed and built prior to 1980s in absence of seismic codes. In particular the so-called "non ductile" buildings represent a common practice foe many seismic prone Countries. Engineers also call them "killer" buildings. An initiative called "Concrete Coalition" (http://www.concretecoalition.org/) has been launched to identify these potential killer buildings in the Los Angeles area.

Structural model of the Bonefro building

In this research (see abstract) we made use of two powerful tools provided by NEES: the supercomputing resources of TeraGrid at the San Diego SuperComputer Center and the structural modeling capabilities of OpenSees parallel. Our goal was making a probabilistic seismic response and collapse assessment of the Bonefro Building. The structure was heavily damaged in the Molise 2002 earthquake. We used the framework developed within the PEER Performance Based Earthquake Engineering methodology (http://www.peertestbeds.net/) to practice the probabilistic assessment on this reinforced concrete structure.

San Diego Supercomputer Center at UCSD (http://www.sdsc.org).

Structural analysis software helps seismic evaluation of non-engineered buildings in developing countries

Source: Computers and Structures International http://www.csiberkeley.com/images/article_img1.jpg

The Great Southern California Shakeout & the Los Angeles International Earthquake Conference

The conference was organized by Dr. Fuad Bendimerad, leader of EMI-Earthquake Megacities Initiative (http://www.emi-megacities.org). In the picture Ellis Stanley, LA Councilman Greig Smith, LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Dr. Fouad Bendimerad. The conference organizers and participants announced the Great Southern California Shakeout Drill for the next day www.shakeout.org.