SCEC INSTANeT News
	2001 EERI Annual Meeting

The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) 2001 Annual Meeting will take place February 7-10 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Monterey, California. The theme of the meeting will be Dealing with Issues of Acceptable Risk. How do people make decisions about seismic risk? Do engineers and earth scientists approach the problem differently from policy makers, building owners, lenders, or the general public? The meeting will focus on and redefine "acceptable risk" at a time when performance-based engineering concepts imply that clients, building owners, and/or government agencies want to make conscious choices on risk and safety. The meeting will explore the evolving concepts of risk and look at cases where risk evaluations are factored into building design and planning decisions-- universities, hospitals, and some corporate settings. Each case will include owner/decision-makers, regulators, engineers and architects to present the full range of views on the issues and the process. Two roundtables will deal with how universities and critical facilities contend with dilemmas in managing risk from engineering and policy perspectives. Speakers will explore questions concerning how safe to make these facilities, whether current standards for hospitals can be met, and whether society is prepared to pay for higher performance in existing buildings. The Universities Roundtable will cover seismic decision making, establishing ground motions for performance standards, and issues in both the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University seismic retrofit programs. The Critical Facilities Roundtable will focus on implications of the State of California's Hospital Act. It will consider the views of health care administration, engineering practice, the state government, and the private sector. The meeting will also feature a spirited debate on the capacity to define acceptable risk. The speakers will be Chris Poland of Degenkolb Engineers, Mary Comerio of UC Berkeley, and Simon Wilkie of Caltech. Other sessions will cover programs that address risk in new and existing government buildings at the federal, state and local levels. Attendees will hear from public risk managers about some of the seismic risk challenges they are faced with and opportunities for engineers to work with local governments to reduce this risk. To support and encourage participation by EERI,s younger members, student members are being offered half-price registration ($215) for the full Annual Meeting. Students and young professionals (age 35 and under) are eligible for a special Saturday-only registration for only $35. The Saturday program includes a presentation on the NEES (Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation) program, a session on risk management challenges facing public entities, a look at the way in which seismic risk is being dealt with internationally, and a discussion about the design and construction of the world-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium. Nonmembers who become members when registering will get a $15 discount on their 2001 membership, and will qualify for the member registration fee of $425 instead of the non-member rate of $450. The program brochure and registration form can be found on EERI,s web site at www.eeri.org. Attendees should keep in mind that to obtain the best room rate and for EERI to fill its room block, hotel reservations must be made by January 7, 2001. (If necessary, you can cancel hotel reservations up to 24 hours before arrival without penalty.)

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