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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Improved Seismic Monitoring - Improved Decision-Making: Assessing the Value of Reduced Uncertainty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11327.
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Appendix B
Committee and Staff Biographies

Chris D. Poland, Chair, is chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Degenkolb Engineers, a structural engineering firm specializing in earthquake engineering. Mr. Poland serves on a number of federal, state, and regional committees devoted to improving seismic safety and developing better codes and guidelines, and participates in various research activities sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He is immediate past president of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.

James Ament recently retired from his position as vice president of operations of State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, the property insurance affiliate of the State Farm Group. Mr. Ament participated in policy development of enterprise risk management and the management of catastrophe insurance-related issues both within State Farm and with other interested groups.

David S. Brookshire is professor of economics and director of the Science Impact Laboratory for Policy and Economics at the University of New Mexico, specializing in public policy issues related to natural resource, natural hazard, and environmental economics. He received his B.A. from San Diego State University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of New Mexico in 1976.

James D. Goltz is an earthquake program manager in southern California for the statewide earthquake program of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, based at the Seismological Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. He is responsible for promoting the application of new seismic informa-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Improved Seismic Monitoring - Improved Decision-Making: Assessing the Value of Reduced Uncertainty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11327.
×

tion and technologies for improved emergency response and recovery. He has been engaged in earthquake preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery in southern California for 25 years.

Peter Gordon is a professor in the Department of Economics and in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California. Dr. Gordon’s research interests encompass urban and suburban sprawl and transportation networks, and the integration of transportation networks and regional economic models to estimate earthquake costs. Dr. Gordon has a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles; an M.A. from the University of Southern California; and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Stephanie A. King is director of risk analysis at Weidlinger Associates, specializing in seismic hazard and risk analysis for regional and site-specific applications, and the use of these techniques to assess damage and loss due to natural and manmade hazards. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, where she developed automated computer techniques for probabilistic seismic hazard and risk assessment of large regions.

Howard Kunreuther is the Cecilia Yen Koo professor of decision sciences and public policy at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and serves as co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. He has a long-standing interest in ways that society can better manage low-probability, high-consequence events as they relate to technological and natural hazards. He is a distinguished fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis and received the Society’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2001, and he is a recipient of the Elizur Wright Award for the publication that makes the most significant contribution to the literature of insurance.

Stuart Nishenko is senior seismologist in the Geosciences Department of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) in San Francisco, California, where he co-manages PG&E’s Earthquake Risk Management Program and the University of California at Berkeley Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center Lifelines program on behalf of the California Energy Commission. He received his B.Sc. degree, magna cum laude, in geology from the City College of New York (1975) and M.S. (1978) and Ph.D. (1983) degrees in geophysics from Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory.

Adam Z. Rose is a professor in the Department of Geography and former head of the Department of Energy, Environmental, and Mineral Economics at the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Rose’s research has been primarily in the areas of energy, environmental, and regional economics. He is the recipient of a Woodrow Wilson fellowship and the American Planning Association’s Outstanding Program Planning Honor

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Improved Seismic Monitoring - Improved Decision-Making: Assessing the Value of Reduced Uncertainty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11327.
×

Award. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University in 1974.

Hope A. Seligson is technical manager at ABS Consulting (formerly EQE International, Inc.), specializing in the area of seismic risk assessment, regional loss estimation, earthquake engineering, seismic hazard mapping, application of geographic information systems, software design and development, and emergency preparedness. She received her B.S. in civil engineering and M.S. in structural engineering, specializing in earthquake engineering, from Stanford University.

Paul G. Somerville is a strong motion seismologist at URS Group, Inc., where he has been involved in the development of seismological methods for specifying seismic design ground motions in earthquake engineering practice and has applied them in the design and analysis of major buildings, bridges, dams, and power generation facilities in many countries, especially the United States, Japan, and New Zealand. He has performed research for National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Science Foundation, and United States Geological Survey. He is involved in the development of seismic provisions of building codes and in the activities of professional research and practice organizations including the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, Pacific Earthquake Research Center, Southern California Earthquake Center, and the Seismological Society of America.

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL STAFF

David A. Feary is a senior program officer with the National Research Council’s Board on Earth Sciences and Resources. His research activities have focused on the geological and geophysical evolution of continental margins, particularly the factors controlling carbonate deposition and reef development in different climatic regimes. He has B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Auckland and a Ph.D. from the Australian National University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Improved Seismic Monitoring - Improved Decision-Making: Assessing the Value of Reduced Uncertainty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11327.
×
Page 179
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Improved Seismic Monitoring - Improved Decision-Making: Assessing the Value of Reduced Uncertainty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11327.
×
Page 180
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Committee and Staff Biographies." National Research Council. 2006. Improved Seismic Monitoring - Improved Decision-Making: Assessing the Value of Reduced Uncertainty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11327.
×
Page 181
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Improved Seismic Monitoring—Improved Decision-Making, describes and assesses the varied economic benefits potentially derived from modernizing and expanding seismic monitoring activities in the United States. These benefits include more effective loss avoidance regulations and strategies, improved understanding of earthquake processes, better engineering design, more effective hazard mitigation strategies, and improved emergency response and recovery. The economic principles that must be applied to determine potential benefits are reviewed and the report concludes that although there is insufficient information available at present to fully quantify all the potential benefits, the annual dollar costs for improved seismic monitoring are in the tens of millions and the potential annual dollar benefits are in the hundreds of millions.

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