Research Project Stories: Supporting Critical Infrastructure in Extreme Weather
April 17, 2024
Research Project Stories: Building to Minimise Disruption after Earthquakes
May 27, 2024
Te Hiranga Rū QuakeCoRE offers its congratulations to the many members of the QuakeCoRE Community that have won awards this year at the 2024 New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE) Conference: Facing the Seismic Challenge, held in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington in April.
The names listed in orange denote QuakeCoRE students and researchers.
NZSEE/QuakeCoRE Emerging Women Leaders in Earthquake Engineering award:
Anna Philpott
In her 13 years in the Holmes Wellington office, Anna has progressed from Graduate Engineer to Senior Project Engineer, with her involvement on projects often extending into the Project Director role responsible for team leadership and delivery, and the Technical Director role responsible for the soundness of design solutions.
Anna has held lead design roles on several structural strengthening projects throughout her career, including the immensely complex Majestic Centre project, and for several heritage buildings including Wellington Museum, Wellington Town Hall, and Taranaki Cathedral.
Anna has been described as an engineer with a deep understanding of the first principles of structural engineering, who is able to develop practical analysis and design methods, and innovative strengthening and retrofit designs that are both practical and cost effective to construct within existing, often occupied, buildings.
Anna also wrote a Holmes Practice Note outlining an analysis method she developed, which has subsequently been developed to form part of Appendix C5D of the Seismic Assessment of Existing Buildings guidelines. This method is now used throughout New Zealand for the assessment and strengthening of existing diaphragms, as well as the design of diaphragms in new buildings.
In 2022, Anna was invited to join the Seismic Risk Working Group, which is a key body developing seismic design guidance in New Zealand, including the proposed updates to the New Zealand seismic loading and design standard (NZS1170.5).
Anna has also taken on technical coaching and training of junior engineers through project support in the Holmes Wellington office, and through technical training sessions at their offices across Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States of America.
Anna has been described by her colleagues as a highly principled, dedicated, and passionate engineer, who strives to maintain high standards, and deliver high quality outcomes.
For these reasons, Anna’s contributions to earthquake engineering in New Zealand are recognised with the 2024 NZSEE/QuakeCoRE Emerging Women Leader in Earthquake Engineering Award.
2024 NZSEE Research Scholarship: Saiteja Sistla
Teja's research aims to develop a risk-targeted seismic design approach for buildings featuring buckling-restrained braced frames (BRBFs). The novelty of his research lies in the utilization of an improved BRBF numerical building model developed as part of this study to provide new insights into the seismic performance and vulnerability of BRBFs in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Otto Glogau Award: Vinod Sadashiva, Richard Mowll, S R Uma, Sheng L Lin, David Heron, Nick Horspool, Mostafa Nayyerloo, James Williams, Yasir Syed, Robert Buxton, Andrew King, Biljana Lukovic, Kelvin Berryman, Michele Daly
This year’s Otto Glogau award was conferred for the paper ““Improving Wellington region’s resilience through integrated infrastructure resilience investments” NZSEE Bulletin, Jun 2021, Vol 54(2)” by the above authors.
Bulletin Service Award: Liam Wotherspoon
Liam has served as the Associate Editor of the NZSEE Bulletin for more than 6 years. In addition to acting as the stand-in Editor for papers co-authored by the Chief Editor (about 20 since 2017) and reviewing multiple submissions in areas of his expertise, Liam has also played a pivotal role in ensuring the Bulletin is produced to a very high standard and is delivered in a timely manner. Throughout the last few years, Liam has been the Editor’s go-to person whenever he faced any issues needing assistance and advice from someone whom he trusts and respects.
Paper / Poster Awards:
2023 Best Research Paper Award –Jen Andrews, Yannik Behr, Maren Böse, Frédérick Massin, Anna Kaiser, Bill Fry, Nick Horspool “Rapid earthquake rupture characterisation for New Zealand using the FinDer algorithm” published in the proceedings of the 2024 NZSEE conference.
2024 Student Paper Award – Kasra Habibi, Robert Cardwell, Alice Chang-Richards, Olga Filippova “Quantification of economic benefits of functional recovery-based design: a stepwise review of the methodology” published in the proceedings of the 2024 NZSEE conference.
