The National Science Foundation (NSF) has renewed the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Computational Modeling and Simulation Center (SimCenter). The renewal award (CMMI 2131111) provides $12.75M over the next 4 years to develop and promote advanced modeling and simulation technologies for natural hazards engineering to understand and quantify the effects of earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and other natural hazards on buildings, lifelines, and communities. Natural hazards pose a grave risk to human life and account for tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in damage each year in the US alone. The SimCenter is creating computational tools and complementary education programs that are empowering researchers to innovate new strategies for mitigating risk and promoting community resilience to natural hazards.
The SimCenter is headquartered at UC Berkeley and led by principal investigator (PI) Sanjay Govindjee (UC Berkeley) and co-PI Gregory G. Deierlein (Stanford University), who serve as co-directors. The leadership team is rounded out by co-PIs Laura Lowes (University of Washington), Ahsan Kareem (University of Notre Dame), and Satish Rao (UC Berkeley). Read about SimCenter’s future plans, and visit the website at https://simcenter.designsafe-ci.org/.