Following a major earthquake, one of Caltrans' most critical tasks is to assess the condition of all potentially impacted bridges and roadway corridors in the state highway system. Timely response is important to ensure public safety, guide emergency vehicle traffic, and re-establish critical lifeline routes. In the past, bridge inspection teams had difficulties setting priorities immediately following an earthquake, because they lacked precise information about where the worst shaking and, most likely, the greatest damage had occurred. In 2005 Caltrans initiated a contract with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to develop and implement a Caltrans-specific version of their ShakeCast system, a post-event software analysis tool that was anticipated to change the way Caltrans responds following a major earthquake. ShakeCast is a web-based application that automatically retrieves measured earthquake shaking data, analyzes it against individual bridge performance characteristics, and generates inspection prioritization emails and other web-based products for emergency responders within minutes of an event. Benefits have already been realized over the course of the test deployment phase. The ShakeCast system has proved to be a valuable tool for post-earthquake response for Caltrans during real events as well as for scenario planning exercises.

This book contains 9 invited keynote and 12 theme lectures presented at the 14th European Conference on Earthquake Engineering (14ECEE) held in Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia, from August 30 to September 3, 2010. The conference was organized by the Macedonian Association for Earthquake Engineering (MAEE), under the auspices of European Association for Earthquake Engineering (EAEE). The book is organized in twenty one state-of-the-art papers written by carefully selected very eminent researchers mainly from Europe but also from USA and Japan. The contributions provide a very comprehensive collection of topics on earthquake engineering, as well as interdisciplinary subjects such as engineering seismology and seismic risk assessment and management. Engineering seismology, geotechnical earthquake engineering, seismic performance of buildings, earthquake resistant engineering structures, new techniques and technologies and managing risk in seismic regions are all among the different topics covered in this book. The book also includes the First Ambraseys Distinguished Award Lecture given by Prof. Theo P. Tassios in the honor of Prof. Nicholas N. Ambraseys. The aim is to present the current state of knowledge and engineering practice, addressing recent and ongoing developments while also projecting innovative ideas for future research and development. It is not always possible to have so many selected manuscripts within the broad spectrum of earthquake engineering thus the book is unique in one sense and may serve as a good reference book for researchers in this field. Audience: This book will be of interest to civil engineers in the fields of geotechnical and structural earthquake engineering; scientists and researchers in the fields of seismology, geology and geophysics. Not only scientists, engineers and students, but also those interested in earthquake hazard assessment and mitigation will find in this book the most recent advances.

The past few decades have witnessed the growth of the Earth Sciences in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the planet that we live on. This development addresses the challenging endeavor to enrich human lives with the bounties of Nature as well as to preserve the planet for the generations to come. Solid Earth Geophysics aspires to define and quantify the internal structure and processes of the Earth in terms of the principles of physics and forms the intrinsic framework, which other allied disciplines utilize for more specific investigations. The first edition of the Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics was published in 1989 by Van Nostrand Reinhold publishing company. More than two decades later, this new volume, edited by Prof. Harsh K. Gupta, represents a thoroughly revised and expanded reference work. It brings together more than 200 articles covering established and new concepts of Geophysics across the various sub-disciplines such as Gravity, Geodesy, Geomagnetism, Seismology, Seismics, Deep Earth Processes, Plate Tectonics, Thermal Domains, Computational Methods, etc. in a systematic and consistent format and standard. It is an authoritative and current reference source with extraordinary width of scope. It draws its unique strength from the expert contributions of editors and authors across the globe. It is designed to serve as a valuable and cherished source of information for current and future generations of professionals.