Natural Disasters

University at Buffalo researchers are launching a series of unprecedented seismic tests on a full-scale, three-bedroom, wood-frame townhouse being built in an earthquake-simulation laboratory in the university's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In November, the structure will be put to a final test in a simulation of California's 1994 Northridge earthquake that is expected to create massive damage.

The University at Buffalo's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) Information Service is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the devastating 1906 earthquake with a major exhibit, "A City in Ruins: The San Francisco Earthquake and Fires of 1906."

Buffalo is fast becoming a center for research, education and new practices in cybersecurity and computer forensics, according to the hosts of a workshop on these topics to be held March 31 in the Center for Tomorrow on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus.

Mudflows initiated by natural processes at old, inactive volcanoes are some of the most lethal geologic phenomena and they contributed to last week's tragic mudslide in Guinsaugon, Philippines, according to a University at Buffalo scientist whose team has developed advanced computer models of mudflows.

Forgot your password? No problem. Biometrics researchers at the University at Buffalo have made important advances that bring closer the day when we can access devices and Web sites with nothing more than the touch of a fingertip.

An earthquake engineer at the University at Buffalo has developed a new "multi-hazard" design for bridges that will make them more resistant to terrorist attacks and earthquakes.

The University at Buffalo and CUBRC will serve as major collaborating partners in a new $15 million Homeland Security Center of Excellence to be established at The Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff announced this week at JHU in Baltimore.

Entire rooms black with mold. Boats sitting in trees, miles from shore. Hospitals with windows broken -- not just by the storm, but by patients and staff desperate for fresh air. City officials standing at major intersections wearing sandwich boards that said "Boil water" since there was no other way to get the word out. Enough solid waste to fill 11 World Trade Center Towers. These are some of the vivid pictures that were drawnat the University at Buffalo by six researchers from various disciplines who presented findings to colleagues about what they saw during reconnaissance trips to the Gulf Coast in September and October.

In a live and online Webcast seminar, structural engineers and social scientists who were dispatched to New Orleans and Mississippi in the days after Katrina hit will describe the vast devastation they saw and discuss strategies for improving U.S. resilience and response to natural disasters, terrorist attack and other extreme events.

Days after Hurricane Katrina hit, research teams from the University at Buffalo's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research were dispatched to the Mississippi coast to conduct structural analysis and remote sensing of damage to large structures. On Oct, 3, MCEER will send three teams of researchers to New Orleans, again with funding primarily from the National Science Foundation.