Speaker:

Shenen Chen,Professor
University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA
High-end Foreign Expert of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, China

Time: 2016-8-17  10:30-11:30
Venue: Civil Engineering B206     Chair: Prof Kaoshan Dai

Outline :
Climate change, carbon emissions and energy use are critically and inconveniently linked subject matters that are politically and economically driven.  Regardless of the politics, there are more and more evidences of climate change – induced storm events, most resulted in natural disasters that challenged the preparedness of coastal cities. Disaster management is now a hot topic for the 21st century – Recent large natural events and the associated losses in human lives and finances have created a trillion-dollar disaster management industry. However, disaster management is a multi-facet issue: it involves government agencies, public, insurance and finance entities, NGOs, volunteer groups, researchers, and etc. 
There is a huge void that can be filled by civil forensic engineers including professional structural investigations, structural system monitoring and designs. The goal is to make existing infrastructures more resilient against disasters and the challenges include how to realistically project and predict potential disaster impacts on the infrastructures and the populations.
In this presentation, recent works at UNC Charlotte on carbon storage and post-supertyphoon disaster data collection will be presented as a preamble for a discussion to the opportunities and challenges in promoting disaster forensics as the major movers and shakers in the disaster industry.

About the Speaker :
Shenen Chen is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. He received a BS, MS and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering, from the West Virginia University (WVU). He has been on the faculty of UNC Charlotte since 2005. Prior to UNC Charlotte, he taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  He is a member of the Forensic Engineering Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the lead in the Committee for Forensic Investigations (CFI).