2016
14/11/2016: The Mw7.8 Kaikoura Earthquake occured at 12:02am on 14 November 2016. A significant amount of coordinated research reconnaissance has been undertaken by several NZ-led agencies (with excellent contributions from international collaborators). Interested readers can find information from: GeoNet; QuakeCoRE; USGS.
02/10/2016: There is a vacancy for a software engineer in our group. Please see the advert here (closes 24 October).
01/10/2016: Jack Baker (Stanford), Brendon Bradley (UC), and Peter Stafford (Imperial) are currently writing a book on seismic hazard and risk analysis. If you are interested in the progress, including receiving updates, please follow this link.
31/09/2016: Brendon Bradley and co-authors Brett Maurer, Russell Green, and Misko Cubrinovski received the 2016 Norman Medal at the ASCE Convention in Portland, Oregon, for the paper "Maurer et al. Evaluation of the Liquefaction Potential Index for Assessing Liquefaction Hazard in Christchurch, New Zealand. JGGE. 140(7)".
11/09/2016: Six members of the research group attended the SCEC Annual Meeting in Palm Springs, California and presented six posters. You can see the presented posters on the group publications page here.
08/09/2016: Brendon Bradley commenced a sabbatical at Stanford University as the UPS Visiting Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Brendon will be based at Stanford until mid-2017 (with numerous trips to NZ)
31/08/2016: The research group presented 16 posters at the QuakeCoRE Annual Meeting in Taupo, as well as presentations at the workshop on ground motion simulation and validation held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting. You can see the presented posters on the group publications page here.
23/08/2016: Brendon Bradley was on the science steering committee for the Mw8 Alpine Fault (AF8) MCDEM two-day workshop in Christchurch. Comparisons of the effect of nucleation location on Alpine Fault ruptures from our work is illustrated here.
15/07/2016: Brendon Bradley, Didier Pettinga, and Jack Baker led a shakeholder workshop as part of an ongoing project on "Guidance on the utilization of ground motion simulations in engineering practice"
14/06/2016: OpenSees workshops were held in Christchurch and Auckland as part of QuakeCoRE's OpenSees capability development efforts. More information, including monthly OpenSees videoconferences can be found here.
24/05/2016: Brendon Bradley delivered a presentation "What will an Alpine Fault earthquake feel like?" as part of the UC Connect Lecture series.
04/05/2016: Animations of our ground motion simulation work for the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes using Blender has been developed in collaboration with Nick Young from eResearch at the University of Auckland. You can see the animations here for the 4 September 2010 Mw7.1 Darfield and 22 February 2011 Mw6.2 Christchurch earthquakes on the group YouTube page.
04/05/2016: Kevin Foster joined the group as a PhD student working on site characterization and site response analysis. You can find information about Kevin and other group members here.
15/04/2016: QuakeCoRE, and the University of Canterbury's new Structural Earthquake Laboratory was officially opened today by the minister of Tertiary Education, Steven Joyce.
13/04/2016: The research paper "Evaluation of the liquefaction potential index for assessing liquefaction hazard in Christchurch, New Zealand" by Brett Maurer, Russell Green, Misko Cubrinovski and Brendon Bradley was awarded the 2016 ASCE Normal Medal - the highest honour granted by ASCE for a technical paper.
04/04/2016: Congratulations to group member, Karim Tarbali, who was awarded the 2016 NZSEE Research Scholarship at the Annual NZSEE research conference.
03/04/2016: Several members of the research group attended the 2016 NZSEE Annual Conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. You can see the presented papers on the group publications here.
18/03/2016: Some of the latest animations of ground motion simulations of the 22 February 2011 "Christchurch" and 4 September 2010 "Darfield" earthquakes can be found on our group YouTube page.
15/02/2016: Brendon Bradley will receive the 2015 Shah Innovation Prize from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute at the 2016 EERI Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
15/02/2016: Our research group performed a near-real-time ground motion simulation of the 14 Feb 2016 Mw5.8 Christchurch earthquake. You can see the animation here
11/02/2016: Richard Clare and Brendon Bradley attended the eResearch New Zealand Conference in Queenstown, NZ
09/02/2016: Brendon Bradley joined the editorial board of the Bulletin of the New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering (BNZSEE) for two years (2016-2017)
2015
01/12/2015: Former research group postdoc, Christopher McGann, has accepted a Lecturer (eq. Assistant Professor) position at the University of Canterbury starting in 2016. The group looks forward to welcoming Chris back to the department as an academic faculty member!
27/11/2015: Brendon Bradley was promoted to Full Professor at the University of Canterbury.
08/11/2015: Seokho Jeong and Brendon Bradley attended the 10th Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Sydney. You can see the presented papers on the group publications here.
04/11/2015: The majority of the research group attended the 6th International Conference on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering (6ICEGE) in Christchurch, NZ. Brendon was deputy-chair of the conference, and also delivered the invited TC203 Young Research Award Lecture. You can see the presented papers on the group publications here.
27/10/2015: Group member, Robin Lee, is currently visiting Po Chen at the University of Wyoming for a month to work on using full waveform tomography to improve the version 1 seismic velocity model for the Canterbury region. Details of the version 1 model are available here as well as its use in simulating the Canterbury earthquakes.
22/10/2015: Two postdoc positions in Ground Motion Simulation and Nonlinear Site Response Analysis are currently open. Applications close 22 November 2015. See details here.
20/09/2015: Group member, Karim Tarbali, is currently visiting USGS Golden for a month to work on integrating both NZ-specific and GCIM ground motion selection features into OpenSHA with Peter Powers. Karim also delivered an invited seminar on his work that can be downloaded here.
16/09/2015: Hoby Razafindrakoto, Karim Tarbali, and Brendon Bradley attended the 2015 Southern California Earthquake Centre (SCEC) Annual Meeting. You can see the presented posters on the group publications here.
31/08/2015: Research from our group was featured on the Marsden fund website.
14/07/2015: Congratulations to group member, Karim Tarbali, who had his paper published in this months issue of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics. You can see group publications here.
02/07/2015: Brendon Bradley is to receive the TC203 (Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering) Young Researcher Award at the 6th International Conference on Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering in Christchurch, New Zealand [Nov 1-4 2015].
02/07/2015: Brendon Bradley is currently on Erskine travel to Imperial College London, ETH Zurich and ISTere, Grenoble. A presentation given in Zurich can be seen here.
29/05/2015: There are currently three postdoctoral fellow positions available in the group related to: (1) lifeline disaster resilience; (2) seismic performance and loss estimation; and (3) nonlinear site response analysis. Please see Research opportunities for more details!
22/05/2015: Brendon Bradley was named as one of five UC academics to recieve a UC Teaching Award for 2015.
23/04/2015: QuakeCoRE: Centre for Earthquake Resilience was funded $21.5M over 5 years by the New Zealand Tertiary Commission. The bid was lead by Ken Elwood and Brendon Bradley. If you would like to be involved in the multi-disciplinary QuakeCoRE environment as a graduate student or post-doctoral researcher contact Brendon Bradley.
23/04/2015: Brendon Bradley attended the 2015 SSA Annual Meeting in Pasadena, California. The presentation on the development of a 3D velocity model for the Canterbury, New Zealand basin can be downloaded here.
10/04/2015: Numerous research group members attended the 2015 NZSEE Annual Conference in Rotorua, New Zealand. The 8 presented papers can be downloaded from the Publications section of this webpage.
28/03/2015: Brendon Bradley will present an invited presentation at the 10th Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering (10PCEE) in Sydney, Australia on 6-8 November 2015. Abstracts are open until May 8.
18/03/2015: QuakeCoRE: Centre for Earthquake Resilience, on which Brendon Bradley is the deputy director, is one of the four proposals shortlisted for a Centre of Research Excellence, three of which will be funded ~$25M over 5 years (media release).
15/01/2015: Animations of on-going ground motion simulation research on the Canterbury earthquakes can be downloaded at the links here: 4 September 2010 Mw7.1 Darfield earthquake (87MB); 22 February 2011 Mw6.2 Christchurch earthquake (141MB). These *.mov files can be displayed using either QuickTimePlayer of VLC (not Windows media player!).
2014
28/11/2014: Brendon Bradley received the 2014 New Zealand Young Engineer of the Year Award
21/11/2014: Brendon Bradley was promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury
23/09/2014: Former Postdoc researcher Christopher McGann started as an Assistant Professor at Washington State University in Pullman, WA.
07/09/2014: Seokho Jeong and Brendon Bradley attended the 2014 SCEC Annual meeting in Palm Springs, CA.
04/09/2014: Brendon Bradley visited Domniki Asimaki, Pablo Ampuero, Rob Graves, and Jose Andrade at Caltech/USGS, Pasadena, and gave a presentation entitled: Engineering aspects of the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes.
31/07/2014: A new postdoc fellowship has been advertised for nonlinear site response analysis of the 2010-2011 Canterbury, New Zealand earthquakes. Please see the Research opportunities page for further details.
24/07/2014: Karim Tarbali and Brendon Bradley attended the 10th U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Anchorage, Alaska. Presented papers can be downloaded from the Publications section of this webpage.
28/06/2014: One postdoctoral fellow and several PhD positions are currently available in the research group. Please see the Research opportunities page for further details.
12/06/2014: Postdoctoral fellow Seokho Jeong joined the research group - Welcome!
08/06/2014: Brendon Bradley was awarded the 2014 Shamsher Prakash Foundation Research Award for internationally renowned excellence in independent research in geotechnical earthquake engineering.
02/05/2014: The Earthquake Spectra special issue on the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes has been published. Contributed papers by our research group can be downloaded from the Publications section of this webpage.
23/03/2014: Congratulations to research group member Robin Lee who was awarded the 2014 NZSEE Research Scholarship!
23/03/2014: Congratulations to reserach group member Trevor Yeow who was awarded the best research paper at the 2014 NZSEE conference.
23/03/2014: Various members of the research group presented a total of 9 papers at the 2014 NZSEE annual conference. Presented papers can be found in the Publications section.
2013
10/12/2013: One postdoctoral fellow and several PhD positions are currently available in the research group. Please see the Research opportunities page for further details.
9/12/2013: Brendon Bradley was awarded the 2013 "Early Career Teaching Award" from the College of Engineering, University of Canterbury.
28/11/2013: Brendon Bradley was awarded two NZ Earthquake Commission (EQC) Biennial Grants as PI "Hybrid broadband simulation of ground mtoions from the Canterbury earthquakes" and "3-dimensional and non-linear local site effects in the Canterbury earthquakes". He was also an AI on a EQC grant lead by collaborator Liam Wotherspoon (UA) titled "Dynamic site characterization of Canterbury strong motion stations using surface wave testing to resolve shallow and deep stratigraphy".
22/11/2013: Brendon Bradley, Misko Cubrinovski and Merrick Taylor attended the New Zealand Geotechnical Society Symposium in Queenstown, New Zealand. Presented papers can be found in the Publications section.
13/11/2013: Brendon Bradley delivered an invited lecture at the NZSOLD/ANCOLD conference on "Implications of the Canterbury earthquakes for estimating design ground motions for dams" in Rotorua, New Zealand.
29/10/2013: Brendon Bradley has been awarded Marsden funding to lead a 3-year project entitled "A Liquefiable bowl of jelly: Understanding the seismic response of a soft and saturated sedimentary basin in the Canterbury earthquakes".
25/10/2013: Congratulations to research group member, Sam McHattie, who completed is ME thesis on "Seismic response of the UC Physics building in the Canterbury earthquakes".
23/10/2013: A web-based javascript application to select ground motions using the GCIM method has been released at http://gm-selector.canterbury.ac.nz/. The application was developed by Joey Scarr and Brendon Bradley. Further detail can be found at: Ground Motion Selection Software.
10/10/2013: Group member, Saumya Das, presented a paper at the 1st Australiasian Conference on Computational Mechanics in Sydney, Australia. The paper can be found in thePublications section.
05/10/2013: A "Presentations" page has been added to the website to directly provide selected presentations which have been delivered at international conferences and invited seminars at universities and other institutions.
03/10/2013: Brendon Bradley was hosted by Prof. Jack Baker at Stanford University, and gave three seminars entitled "A comparison of conventional metrics for seismic performance assessment", "Seismic hazard consistent ground motion selection using the generalized conditional intenisty measure (GCIM) method" and "Engineering aspects of the Canterbury earthquake sequence": see Presentations.
30/09/2013: Brendon Bradley was one of 10 early- to mid-career researchers across all disciplines to be awarded the prestigious "Rutherford Discovery Fellowship" for the project "Earth-shattering detective work: Uncovering the mysteries of unresolved ground motion and geotechnical case histories from the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes". The project provides $800,000 over a period of 5 years.
20/09/2013: Brendon Bradley was hosted by Prof. Jon Bray at the University of California, Berkeley, and gave two seminars entitled "Seismic hazard consistent ground motion selection using the generalized conditional intenisty measure (GCIM) method" and "Engineering aspects of the Canterbury earthquake sequence".
11/09/2013: Brendon Bradley attended the Southern California Earthquake Center Annual Meeting in Palm Springs. Presented posters can be found in the Publications section.
07/09/2013: Brendon Bradley visited Prof. Brady Cox and Prof. Ellen Rathje at the University of Texas, Austin, and gave a seminar entitled "Engineering aspects of the Canterbury earthquake sequence".
30/08/2013: Brendon Bradley attended the Vienna Congress on Recent Advances on Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics. Presented papers can be found in the Publications section.
23/08/2013: Brendon Bradley visited Prof. Matjaz Dolsek and Prof. Peter Fajfar at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
24/07/2013: A new PhD scholarship in "High Performance Computing (HPC) aspects of Earthquake-induced ground motion simulation" has been established. Applications close on 21 October 2013, see: Research opportunities.
22/07/2013: A summary of the observed ground motions from the 21 July 2013 Mw6.6 earthquake in Cook Strait, off the coast of Seddon, can be found here.
26/06/2013: Brendon Bradley authored the inaugural Opinion Paper in Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics "A critical examination of seismic response uncertainty analysis in earthquake engineering". A copy of the paper can be found in the Publications section.
19/06/2013: Brendon Bradley and colleagues attended the International Conference on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering: In Honour of Professor Kenji Ishihara. Presented papers and posters can be found in the Publications section.
02/06/2013: Two new PhD scholarship opportunities closing 25 September 2013 have been posted, see: Research opportunities.
28/04/2013: Congratulations to research group member, Varun Joshi, for being awarded the "Best Student Paper" at the 2013 NZSEE Annual Conference titled "Empirical analysis of near-fault forward directivity effects in the 2010-11 Canterbury earthquakes".
28/04/2013: Brendon Bradley and many of the research group members attended the 2013 New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Annual Conference in Wellington, NZ. Presented papers and posters can be found in the Publications section.
22/03/2013: There is a current opening for a post-doctoral researcher for the project "Examining the role of 3D nonlinear local site effects in the Canterbury earthquakes. Applications close 30 April 2013. Further details can be found here.
11/03/2013: Dr Brendon Bradley is leading a project with Dr Brady Cox and Prof. Misko Cubrinovski that is currently (11/03/2013 - 26/03/2013) performing active seismic vibration testing using NEES's T-Rex in Christchurch. An executive summary can be found at here.
03/03/2013: Course notes for the postgraduate course ENEQ610: Engineering Seismology, taught by Brendon Bradley, have been posted on the Teaching page. They are freely available for use and reproduction.
15/02/2013: Contour maps of the spatial distribution of PGA from 7 of the major Canterbury earthquakes are now available at: Spatial distribution of ground motion. These maps have been adopted by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for historical liquefaction assessment in Canterbury.
28/01/2013: The recent passive array testing, and upcoming active testing with the NEES TRex vibroseis in Christchurch was discussed in a recent article published by NEES. This work is been lead by Brendon Bradley (NZ-side) and Brady Cox (US-side, University of Texas at Austin).
2012
02/12/2012: Three new PhD scholarship opportunities have been posted, see: Research opportunities.
13/10/2012: Processed strong motion data from the 2010 Darfield and 2011 Christchurch earthquakes have been posted on the website page: Software and Data
29/09/2012: Conditional PGA maps from the major earthquakes in the Canterbury region have been developed for the Department of Building and Housing (DBH) for liquefaction evaluation. Details can be found on the Canterbury Geotechnical Database, or more technical details at: Spatial distribution of ground motion.
28/09/2012: Brendon Bradley, and group members Trevor Yeow and Jawad Arefi, attended the 15th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Lisbon. Presented papers can be found in the Publications section.
12/09/2012: Brendon Bradley attended the 2012 Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) Annual Meeting. Presented posters can be found in the Publications section.
08/09/2012: Brendon Bradley visited Prof. Jack Baker and Prof. Eduardo Miranda at Stanford University (photo), and gave a presentation at the John A. Blume Center entitled "The Canterbury Earthquake Sequence".
01/09/2012: A special issue on the Canterbury earthquake sequence was published by the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics., including a paper by Brendon Bradley (see the Publications section).
24/08/2012: "The seismic demand hazard and importance of the conditioning intensity measure" was published in the Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics special issue on Seismic Damage and Loss Assessment in Buildings. You can download this here or see the Publications section for more details.
15/08/2012: Brendon Bradley was part of the expert panel on forensic concrete examination for the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission in relation to the collapse of the CTV building. Details can be found in videos here and written documents here.
01/08/2012: Brendon Bradley's image was on the front cover of the "UC Futures Project" sent to central government for strategic support. The 6-page document can be found here.
30/07/2012: Group members Sam McHattie and Varun Joshi successfully presented their research proposals to the department
30/07/2012: Brendon Bradley provided expert evidence to the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission in relation to the collapse of the CTV building. Evidence on ground motion aspects and on the nonlinear response history analysis model of the CTV building can be found in videos here and written documents here.
01/06/2012: Brendon Bradley, along with UC Geology Sciences Colleague Mark Quigley, appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Company's Catalyst program on the Canterbury earthquakes.
30/05/2012: Brendon Bradley attended the Second international conference on performance-based design in earthquake geotechnical engineering in Taormina, Italy. Presented papers can be found in the Publications section.
15/04/2012: Brendon Bradley won the 2012 Ivan Skinner EQC Award "For the advancement of earthquake engineering research in New Zealand".
15/04/2012: Brendon Bradley attended the 2012 New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Annual Conference in Christchurch. Presented papers can be found in the Publications section.
16/03/2012: Brendon Bradley has been awarded a 3 year research grant in collaboration with GNS Science on "Quantification and numerical modelling of source, path, and site-specific effects in the Canterbury earthquakes" from the Natural Hazards Research Platform.
15/01/2012: Brendon Bradley provided a submission on the ground motion and seismicity aspects of the Darfield and Christchurch earthquakes. A copy of the report can be found on the Royal Commission webpage or directly here.
01/01/2012: Brendon Bradley has joined the editorial board of Earthquake Spectra.