University at Buffalo

Protecting buildings from earthquake damage

As home to MCEER, the nation’s first earthquake engineering research center, UB has been the epicenter of research to protect buildings, infrastructure and people from extreme events since 1986.

Advanced technology developed with researchers in UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and MCEER is protecting buildings, bridges and critical infrastructure around the world. In California alone, these include the San Francisco airport terminal and that city’s U.S. Court of Appeals building, a building at the U.S. Naval Station in San Diego and Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in San Bernardino County.

UB’s Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering is also home to National Science Foundation George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) facility, the world's most versatile earthquake engineering research facility designed to provide testing capabilities to understand how even very large structures behave during earthquakes.

In 2006, UB's Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory, part of NEES, made history when a full-size wooden townhouse built on the facility’s twin shake tables was subjected to a simulated earthquake the magnitude of California’s 1994 Northridge temblor.

DISCOVER MORE

Shaking the house
See a simulated earthquake of the magnitude of California’s 1994 Northridge earthquake rock a wooden house in testing in UB’s Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory

MCEER Web site
Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research

Department of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering

SEESL
Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences