People
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Dr Tiziana Rossetto, Director of EPICENTRE (t.rossetto (at) ucl.ac.uk) Dr Tiziana Rossetto, Director of EPICENTRE (t.rossetto (at) ucl.ac.uk) Dr Tiziana Rossetto is a Reader in the Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering Department at UCL, is Programme Director for the MSc in Earthquake Engineering with Disaster Management and Co-director of the EngD Cetre in Urban Sustainability and Resilience. Although trained as a structural earthquake engineer, Tiziana believes in an interdisciplinary approach to earthquake related risk research, in particular the combination of engineering and social sciences. Her work in EPICentre, (in collaboration with various industrial and academic partners), focuses on investigating the effects of tsunami on coastal infrastructure, developing methods of predicting building damage and affected population in earthquakes and developing multidisciplinary resilience indicators for populations using new technologies. Tiziana is also a committee member of the UK Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics (SECED) and the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) with which she has undertaken a number of field missions to assess damage to buildings and infrastructure in earthquake zones (e.g. for the 2009 Aquila Italy earthquake, 2008 Wenchuan China Earthquake and 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami). Personal web-page and publications |
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Dr Helene Joffe (h.joffe (at) ucl.ac.uk) Dr Helene Joffe is a Reader in the Division of Psychology, UCL. Her area of expertise is the human response to potential danger, or risk, and she is the grant holder responsible for the ‘human loss’ study within the EPICentre project. As a social and health psychologist her work spans the human response to the threat of epidemics, rail accidents and earthquakes. Her work utilises social representations theory for the exploration of these phenomena. In the EPICentre project a cross-cultural study (Japan, Turkey, USA) of the representation of earthquakes is being undertaken. Personal web-page and publications |
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Professor William Allsop (w.allsop (at) hrwallingford.co.uk) Professor William Allsop is Technical Director for Maritime Structures at HR Wallingford and main industrial partner on the “Tsunami: their characteristics and effects on buildings”. He has been responsible for research to advance design methods in collaboration with other UK and European researchers. As Visiting Professor at University of Southampton (and previously at Sheffield), William Allsop has cooperated on research projects in UK, Europe and USA, particularly in VOWS, Big-VOWS, PROVERBS, CLASH and Floodsite. At HR Wallingford he has gained more than 30 years experience of testing and analysis of breakwaters, sea walls, revetments, piers and coastal structures. He has further experience of tidal estuaries, in sand and cohesive sediment transport, in the performance of river structures, outfalls, and on temporary flood protection devices. HR Wallingford website |
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Dave Robinson (d.robinson (at) hrwallingford.co.uk) David Robinson is an engineer in the Engineering Hydraulics and Structure group at HR Wallingford. He has a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College and is experienced in physical modelling of coastal structures, including breakwaters in India, sea walls on the English South Coast and ports in Rotterdam, Dover and Tristan Da Cuna. David was part of the team that developed the original design of the Tsunami Generator and has supported the design, construction and testing of the Tsunami Generator throughout its progression. HR Wallingford website |
EPICENTRE Project Panel
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Zygmunt Lubkowski, Panel Chairman (zygi.lubkowski (at) arup.com) Zygmunt Lubkowski is an Associate Director at Arup and is responsible for all aspects of geotechnical earthquake engineering and soil dynamics for Arup across the world. He chairs the EPICENTRE Project panel and co-supervises Tristan Lloyd on the Tsunami project. Ziggy has contributed to several seismic research and development projects, participated in numerous post-earthquake field missions and has published numerous papers relating to this work. Personal web-page |
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Professor John Adams (john.adams (at) ucl.ac.uk) John Adams is an Emeritus Professor of the Geography Department at University College London, a panel member of EPICENTRE, and advisor on the Human Loss Project. Professor Adams was a member of the original Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth in the early 1970s and has been involved in debates about environmental issues ever since. To see some of his views, and publications visit his blog. |
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Professor Nick Tyler (n.tyler (at) ucl.ac.uk) Nick Tyler is Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering, and the Head of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at UCL. He set up and runs the Accessibility Research Group within the Centre for Transport Studies, with a team of researchers investigating many aspects of accessibility and public transport. The group has a total research budget of more than £4 million for projects including the PAMELA pedestrian environment laboratory, which is being used to develop models for accessible pedestrian infrastructure. Personal web-page |
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Dr John Twigg (j.twigg (at) ucl.ac.uk) John Twigg is an independent researcher-consultant and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, University College London. His interests in the fields of disaster risk reduction and sustainable development include socio-economic vulnerability, ‘mainstreaming’ and other institutional aspects of disaster risk management, disasters, education and schools, risk communications and early warnings, disability and disasters, and the history of disaster management. He is the author of the widely used text book Disaster Risk Reduction: mitigation and preparedness in development and emergency programming (London: Humanitarian Practice Network, 2004). |
EPICENTRE Researchers
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Christian Solberg (c.solberg (at) ucl.ac.uk) Christian Solberg is a Research Assistant on the Human Loss Project and from Jan ’09 a part-time PhD student in UCL’s department of Science and Technology Studies. His main tasks for the EPICENTRE project is data collection in Seattle (recently finished), and in collaboration with Dr. Joffe, analysis and write-up of the survey data from USA, Japan and Turkey. He has a MSc in Social and Public Communication from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Prior to joining the EPICENTRE project he worked with Dr. Joffe on an ESRC-funded study of lay representations of MRSA in the UK. |
| Marc Hill (marc.hill (at) ucl.ac.uk) Marc is a PhD student working on a framework for seismic vulnerability assessment in Europe. Funded by EPSRC and Benfield Ltd, he is investigating all aspects of seismic vulnerability, has proposed new ways to rate seismic loss assessment tools and collected primary data for re-calibrating cost ratios for European buildings. He also participated and reported on the Folkstone, UK earthquake of 2007. Personal Web-page |
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Ingrid Charvet (i.charvet (at) ucl.ac.uk) Ingrid is a PhD student on the Tsunami project. She has an MSc in Geophysical Hazards, which she obtained from UCL. Since joining the EPICENTRE she has been involved in the development of the new Tsunami Generator , the design and running of experiments and the analysis of Tsunami behaviour at the coast. Her research looks to better understand Tsunami waves in coastal regions using the experimental data obtained as well as previous observations, in order to characterize the direct wave impact (runup, velocities, forces, etc). |
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Tristan Lloyd (tristan.lloyd(at) ucl.ac.uk) Tristan is researching vulnerability of coastal infrastructure to tsunami under a CASE studentship, with Arup as the industrial partner. After completing his MEng in Civil Engineering at the University of Nottingham, Tristan worked for Halcrow in their numerical modelling team for a year and also has experience in structural engineering, geology and surveying. Since joining the EPICentre in October 2008, Tristan has been involved in physical modelling of tsunami waves at HR Wallingford, with a particular interest in the forces imposed on structures. His PhD studies the relationship between waves and structural damage to infrastructure and is closely related to that of Ingrid Charvet. More recently he participated in the EEFIT mission to the regions of Samoa affected by the South Pacific tsunami of 29 September 2009. |
| Enrica Verrucci (e.verrucci (at) ucl.ac.uk) Enrica is a graduate of Bologna University. She has worked with ImageCat Ltd for the past year and recently participated in the EEFIT post-earthquake Mission to the Wenchuan earthquake in China. A recent addition to the EPICENTRE, Enrica looks to investigate the feasibility of using satellite imagery to assess the resilience of communities to disasters. She is co-supervised on this project by Dr Beverley Adams of ImageCat Ltd and Dr John Twigg, Honorary Research Fellow at the Benfield UCL Hazard Centre. |
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Randolph Borg (r.borg (at) ucl.ac.uk) Randolph graduated from the University of Malta in architecture and Civil Engineering. He obtained a M.Sc. from the University of Pavia and ROSE School in Earthquake Engineering. Following the masters, he continued to work as a research collaborator at EUCentre, an organisation within the same university, on projects related to the assessment of port structures. He was particularly responsible to carry out large scale 1-g shaking table experiments on R.C. diaphragm retaining walls. During intermediate periods of his studies, he has worked in design and site offices where he was particularly involved in projects related to road design and construction, and design and construction of multi-storey structures in steel, concrete and masonry. |
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Melanie Duncan (melanie.duncan (at) ucl.ac.uk) Melanie Duncan is an EngD student who has an MSc in Geophysical Hazards from UCL. Her research is on multi-hazard assessments and how these can be utilised by NGOs and their partners. Such assessments will not only look at the impacts of multiple natural hazards but will also take into account the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, such that a more holistic assessment of hazards is carried out. This work is being carried out in partnership with the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD). |
