AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

Presenters at our lunchtime panel discussion will offer guidance on earthquake mitigation, prevention, and recovery. Topics range from methods to mitigate damage to structures and collections to lessons learned after seismic activity.  Salt Lake City, Utah is on the Wasatch Fault making this an appropriate venue to address this topic as staff in cultural heritage institutions and regional planners are working on solutions to prevent damage. 
Our experts will share their experience and expertise with counteracting seismic activity, through proactively retrofitting and stabilizing historic buildings, planning and designing new structures, focusing on ways to identify and reduce risk during planning. Discussions will include examples of successes, mistakes, and even failures. Participants and presenters will have an opportunity to ask each other questions after the presentations. The goal of the lunchtime panel discussion is to offer solutions for identifying and mitigating risks, foster planning to reduce damage, and encourage interdisciplinary conversations to develop innovative solutions.
Speaker: Sarah B. George, Executive Director Emeritus, Natural History Museum of Utah
Designing a Museum in an Active Seismic Zone – 10-15 minutes
Salt Lake City is one of the most seismically hazardous urban areas in the interior of the United States because of its location along the Wasatch Fault, at the eastern edge of the highly faulted Basin and Range province.  Living in an active fault zone requires significant thought about how to protect people and objects when designing a new structure.  The Natural History Museum of Utah’s new home, the Rio Tinto Center, was designed to fit into the hillside above the city, using a variety of engineering solutions such as soldier piles and shear walls to minimize the potential for collapse in a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake.  The architects also used the concept of seismic faulting as inspiration for the form and façade of this beautiful, award-winning building. Finally, on March 18, 2020, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck the SLC area, with its epicenter about 18.5 miles west of the Museum. We’ll discuss how the building performed in that quake.
Speaker: Jerry Podany, Heritage Conservation Consultant, Los Angeles, CA, “Is it REALLY a surprise: effective methods of vulnerability assessment and mitigation of damage and loss from earthquakes” – 10-15 minutes
Mitigation of damage and loss due to earthquakes remains a relatively new and unexplored area within Heritage Conservation and Preventive Conservation within Museums. While considerable research and development in seismology, civil engineering and architectural design has influenced approaches to protecting built heritage, the protection of heritage collection’s remains wanting. A general lack of understanding regarding the scope of the hazard as well as the availability of effective solutions can be offset by an increase in pragmatic research, collaborative efforts between conservation and engineering professionals, and the sharing of both observations and mitigation initiatives.
 
Speaker: Jerod G. Johnson, Senior Engineer, Reaveley Engineers & Associates
The Historic Trajectory of Seismic Base Isolation Solutions to Historic Structures – 10-15 minutes
Based on a wealth of experiences gleaned over the course of his career, Jerod G. Johnson will provide brief case studies that trace the historic development of seismic base isolation solutions for historic structures. In this overview Johnson will explore the evolution of seismic engineering solutions over the past 30 years beginning with the Salt Lake City and County Building – the first historic building in the world to be retrofitted with a seismic base isolation system (1989). Next he will cover the base isolation system installed under the Utah State Capitol Building designed to withstand a 7.3 magnitude earthquake (2008). And finally, the Salt Lake City LDS Temple seismic base isolation renovation will be discussed, a yearlong project begun 27 Dec 2019 that is utilizing a state-of-the-art Japanese roller system, the first of its kind to be installed in the U.S.