Engineering and Organizational Issues Related to the World Trade Center Attack, Volume 1, Overview of Damage to Buildings Near Ground Zero

Keywords: World Trade Center (WTC).  Ground Zero.  Building damages.  Community resilience.  Emergency responses.  Terrorism.  Verizon Building.  Winter Garden.  3 World Financial Center.  90 West Street Building.  Banker's Trust Building.  Architectural damages.  Debris.  New York City.

Abstract: This is the first in a series of reports presenting the findings of a NSF-funded research project undertaken by the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER).  The project aims to collect perishable data in the aftermath of the WTC attack for later study to gain a better understanding of how resilience is achieved in physical, engineered, and organizational systems.  Replete with color photographs of damage to the surrounding buildings and diagrams of the towers' structure, this report provides an overview of the damage to buildings in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero.  Of particular interest to the MCEER reconnaissance team were buildings that suffered moderate damage from the impact of large debris, but did not collapse.  Subsequent research, including an investigation of whether current analytical methods used in earthquake engineering can be used to explain the observed structural behavior and implications for the development of effective measures to significantly enhance blast-resilience of structures, is also discussed.