Following an agreement between the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the First Planning Meeting for NEES/E-Defense Collaboration on Earthquake Engineering Research was held in 2004. This meeting laid the groundwork for a joint research program related to improving understanding of seismic effects and thereby reducing the seismic vulnerability of buildings and civil infrastructural systems. The emphasis of the program is to conduct experimental research using the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) equipment sites and the three-dimensional full-scale earthquake testing facility (E-Defense) of the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED). To formalize the collaboration, two Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) were executed, one between NSF and MEXT in September 2005 and one between the NEES Consortium Inc. (NEES Inc.) and NIED in July 2005. In order to continue the collaboration to the “second phase” that began in 2010, the latter MOU was updated in May 2010 by the NEES Operation Center (NEEScomm) and NIED.
Before updating the MOU between NEEScomm and NIED, two meetings were held to prepare for the second-phase collaboration. The First Planning Meeting for the Second Phase of the NEES/E-Defense was held in January 2009 to discuss the need for and benefits of continued NEES/E-Defense collaboration. This meeting identified a number of important topics of mutual interest to the U.S. and Japan that would benefit from continued research collaboration and sharing of NEES and E-Defense resources. In addition, a follow-up meeting to discuss details of the next phase of collaboration was recommended. In response, the Seventh Planning Meeting of NEES/E-Defense Collaborative Research on Earthquake Engineering was convened in September 2009 to review the efforts and accomplishments of the past four and one half years and to discuss specific opportunities for continued and hopefully stronger collaboration for the coming years.
Following these two meetings, the Eighth Planning Meeting of NEES/E-Defense Collaborative Research on Earthquake Engineering was convened during September 17 and 18, 2010. The meeting was attended by leading researchers from both countries as well as representatives from NSF, MEXT and other government agencies. In the plenary and breakout sessions of the meeting, thirty-two participants from the U.S. and forty participants from Japan discussed NEES/E-Defense collaboration in the second phase that started in 2010.
This report contains a summary of the Eighth Planning Meeting along with the recommendations and resolutions reached by the participants. The appendices contain the list of participants, the meeting agenda and schedule, the materials presented during the plenary sessions, and summaries of the recommendations developed by individual breakout sessions where participants discussed in detail various scientific and engineering challenges that should be addressed during the second phase of the NEES/E-Defense collaboration.
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