2020-mimi
 

February 2020

The Applied Technology Council (ATC) is thankful for the contributions from our Board, the consultants who support our projects, and the funding agencies that provide the means to continue making our mission a reality. As we leap into 2020, we want to take a moment to share some of our products, trainings, and activities that were completed in the past year.

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Recently Published Reports

ATC proudly produced more than 20 publications last year! These reports included the update and expansion of the FEMA P-58 Series on the Seismic Performance Assessment of Buildings, Implementation and Methodology, the highly anticipated FEMA P-2018, Seismic Evaluation of Older Concrete Buildings for Collapse Potential, and the creation of FEMA P-2055, Post-disaster Building Safety Evaluation Guidance, which was developed in response to Section 1241(a) of the Disaster Recovery and Reform Act of 2018.

ATC’s work overseas produced the World Bank-funded document ATC-142, Safety Prioritization of School Buildings for Seismic Retrofit using Performance-Based Risk Assessment in the Kyrgyz Republic. Closer to home, ATC prepared the San Francisco Tall Buildings Study for the City and County of San Francisco, as well as the prescriptive plan sets accompanying FEMA P-1100, Vulnerability-Based Seismic Assessment and Retrofit of One- and Two-Family Dwellings—Prestandard, for the California Earthquake Authority (CEA).

For a list of all of the ATC-produced reports published last year, visit our website.

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ATC Hazards by Location
Website and API

In 2019, the ATC Hazards by Location website (beta version) received more than 1,000,000 hits per month, assisting users from every U.S. state and territory, as well as 168 countries. Multiple updates were implemented in 2019, including the addition of the Puerto Rico Building Code (2018). Current work on the site will soon introduce 2019 Special Wind Region data for the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Also recently released was the ATC Hazards by Location API, which allows users to programmatically access all of ATC's windspeed, snow, tornado, and seismic design loads data, querying each dataset by latitude and longitude. Visit the ATC Hazards by Location website to learn more about the API and request your own key.

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Workshops

NIST Workshop on
Large Outdoor Fire Modeling

On March 18-19, 2019, ATC assisted the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in conducting a workshop on Large Outdoor Fire Modeling (LOFM). This workshop was focused on wildfires and their impacts on communities and the environment. The objective of the workshop was to assess the state of the art in computational fire modeling and to identify a set of research priorities for driving progress in the development of large outdoor fire models. Details of the workshop process and discussions are presented in NIST Special Publication 1245, Large Outdoor Fire Modeling (LOFM) Workshop Summary Report, prepared by NIST with assistance from ATC.

Summit on Unreinforced Masonry Buildings in Utah

On June 25-26, 2019, ATC assisted the Utah Division of Emergency Management (UDEM) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Region VIII in convening a summit on unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings in Utah. The purpose of the summit was to raise awareness about the risk that URM buildings pose to Utah communities, promote mitigation best practices, highlight mitigation funding opportunities, and identify actions and solutions that should be prioritized to increase Utah’s resilience against large earthquakes. More than 100 government officials, emergency managers, academics, researchers, leaders of nonprofits and faith-based organizations, journalists, and building design professionals were in attendance. Proceedings of the summit were published on the ATC website early this year as the
ATC-137-2 report.

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In-Person Trainings

FEMA NETAP

In 2019, ATC organized 55 in-person trainings in 12 U.S. states and territories through FEMA’s National Earthquake Technical Assistance Program (NETAP), with participation from more than 2,100 emergency managers, engineers, building contractors, state and local government officials, and facilities managers. NETAP assistance covers diverse topics, including seismic mitigation strategies for hospitals and schools, rapid visual screening of buildings for potential seismic hazards, and reducing the risks of nonstructural earthquake damage. ATC also developed training material for and organized in-person trainings on FEMA P-2006, Example Application Guide for ASCE/SEI 41-13 Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Existing Buildings, which was published in 2018.

ATC On-Demand Trainings

ATC’s training program includes a variety of topics available to those interested in hosting an in-person event. More than 25 trainings were conducted in 2019, both in the U.S. and internationally. Hosting organizations included major industry firms, federal, state, and local government agencies, and other organizations proactively preparing their staff and others in the event of earthquakes, hurricanes, or other hazards.

Please visit our website to learn more and request training for your organization.

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Webinars

Last year, ATC hosted 4 free webinars funded by FEMA under NETAP. These webinars reached more than 3,000 participants from 51 U.S. states and territories and more than 50 countries. Participants represented a range of professions, including structural and civil engineers, architects, scientists, emergency managers, school and government officials, and researchers.

To be informed of upcoming webinars, please join our mailing list.

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ATC Board of Directors

ATC would like to recognize the contributions of Board members Andrew Kennedy and William Staehlin, whose terms ended in 2019. ATC has been well-served by these devoted engineers, and we are grateful for their many years of input and advice.

Additionally, we would like to welcome new Board members, Melissa Burton and Christopher Tokas, whose terms began in 2019. A complete list of all current ATC Board members can be found on our website.

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