Abbie Liel News

Women’s History Month: A Conversation with Professor Abbie Liel

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 16:47:43 +0000

Women’s History Month: A Conversation with Professor Abbie Liel Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/26/2024 - 10:47

Professor Abbie Liel's work focuses on finding new ways to design and assess structures to withstand extreme conditions, aiming to make them safer and more sustainable.

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Colorado prisons vulnerable to natural disasters but may be ill-prepared

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 20:15:00 +0000

Colorado prisons vulnerable to natural disasters but may be ill-prepared Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/25/2023 - 14:15

Seventy-five percent of incarceration facilities in the state are vulnerable to climate-related hazards, such as wildfires, extreme heat, floods or landslides, and many are ill-equipped to handle them, new research by Geotechnical Engineering Professor Shideh Dashti suggests.

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Assoc. Prof. Shideh Dashti & Prof. Abbie Liel on Incarceration in a Warming World panel, Sept. 29, 3-4:30, DLC 1B70

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 16:11:26 +0000

Assoc. Prof. Shideh Dashti & Prof. Abbie Liel on Incarceration in a Warming World panel, Sept. 29, 3-4:30, DLC 1B70 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/15/2023 - 10:11

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Studying the Marshall Fire recovery to help communities rebuild

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 17:24:06 +0000

Studying the Marshall Fire recovery to help communities rebuild Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/16/2022 - 11:24

Jeff Zehnder

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Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20

Tuesday, Sept. 20 | 12:00 p.m. | Zoom - Register Now

Safe, disaster-resilient housing is critical to our way of life, prosperity, and sense of security. Yet, many houses remain vulnerable to damage from earthquakes, hurricanes, and other hazards, affecting communities in the near and long term.

In this webinar, Professors Amy Javernick-Will and Abbie Liel will describe findings from research that their team conducted to enhance housing safety in the multi-hazard context of Puerto Rico.

Considering that a large portion of housing stock is built informally, where building codes and regulations may not be followed, they argue that how builders and residents perceive housing safety influences how housing is designed, built, and maintained.

Focusing on one misalignment, the installation of hurricane straps, they will discuss their initial efforts to build capacity in the region by partnering with a community-based organization.

Find out more and register to attend

The Marshall fire screamed across the prairie, exploding into homes with 80 mph winds and destroying entire neighborhoods. It caused over a billion dollars in damage in less than a day and took everything from more than 1,000 homeowners in Superior and Louisville, Colorado, leaving behind little more than ash and concrete foundations.

Nine months have passed since the disaster, and as families work to rebuild, an interdisciplinary team of ��ſ��2023��¼ researchers has received a major National Science Foundation grant to study long-term community impacts to help improve outcomes from future disasters.

“In this project, we’re really interested in how jurisdictions and homeowners are rebuilding, particularly in light of future risks,” said Amy Javernick-Will, a professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering and lead investigator on the grant. “There have been other fires in California and Oregon, but the scale of this destruction was pretty dramatic.”

As disasters increase, destroying homes and infrastructure, families and governments have to make decisions on how to rebuild. Those decisions include adoption and enforcement of building codes that can have a long-term influence on community outcomes in resiliency and environmental sustainability. Those codes, however, come with a tradeoff, including potential increased costs and time to rebuild.

It is an obstacle facing one member of the research team first-hand. Matthew Koschmann, an associate professor of communications, owns a rental property in Superior that was destroyed by the fire.

“Do I want to incorporate this new ordinance or opt out? I’m part of these conversations on Slack channels online. Some people are saying we should upgrade our houses to be more fire resilient, that it will help protect the entire neighborhood, but others are saying the added cost to their rebuild is insurmountable,” Koschmann said.

The research is particularly focused on the social aspect of rebuilding: how communities are connecting, influencing each other, and making major decisions about moving forward. A goal of the grant is to provide guidance on the decisions and uncertainties homeowners and governments face during the rebuilding process and identifying the processes and codes that meet collective goals after a disaster.

“In fires, what your neighbors do affects your property,” Javernick-Will said. “This shared action is really important, and we want to uncover this process. Most studies look at just the immediate response, the first couple of weeks. There are far fewer long-term studies.”

Much of the work will be conducted through personal interviews with homeowners, as well as builders, insurance companies, and municipal government officials. Noah Gershon, a civil engineering PhD student, is leading this part of the effort.

“There is a complicated interplay between the different groups,” Gershon said. “We want to study each to see how we can make things better. There’s a perception that after a disaster, everything is taken care of and funding is available for everyone. It’s just not true. Homeowners have to figure out a lot themselves. We want to improve that process.”

A goal of the work is to bridge the gap between engineering and human social interaction to understand the real-world impacts of decision making after disasters.

“There are complex social interactions here. It isn’t just technical scientific stuff. It’s both,” Koschmann said. “There’s a level of stress and tension that’s part of it and dealing with different insurance policies, neighbors, building codes. This isn’t abstract. It has real personal impact.”

In addition to Javernick-Will, Koschmann, and Gershon, the research team also includes Abbie Liel, a professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, and Megan Ellery, a civil engineering PhD student.

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Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 20:42:52 +0000

Webinar: Building Capacity for Safe, Disaster-Resilient Housing - Sept. 20 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/14/2022 - 14:42

Tuesday, Sept. 20 | 12:00 p.m. | Zoom - Register Now

In this webinar, Professors Amy Javernick-Will and Abbie Liel will describe findings from research that their team conducted to enhance housing safety in the multi-hazard context of Puerto Rico.

Focusing on one misalignment, the installation of hurricane straps, they will discuss their initial efforts to build capacity in the region by partnering with a community-based organization.

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Researchers to explore link between women’s perspectives and resilient housing design

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 17:39:37 +0000

Researchers to explore link between women’s perspectives and resilient housing design Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/27/2022 - 11:39

Engineers have studied disaster resilience in housing for decades – exploring and creating better solutions to keep people safe and in place after events like earthquakes with minimal disruption to their daily lives.

New research from ��ſ��2023��¼ aims to take that work further by better incorporating the perspectives and attitudes of those living in impacted homes in that development process. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project will look specifically at how the inclusion of women’s knowledge, priorities, and perceptions in the decision-making process changes both the policies proposed and ultimately selected, as well as the development of new approaches over time.

Professor Abbie Liel in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering is leading the work. She said she has become increasingly convinced of the vital importance of both engineering better, more resilient housing and the central role women will play in that process.

“In Turkey, I saw seismic safety education programs directed at children and their mothers that were more successful at addressing risks than other programs. And in Oklahoma I saw homeowners – the most visible of whom are women – filing class-action lawsuits about earthquake damage to their homes caused by deep injection of wastewater from oil and gas activities,” Liel said. “So while there has been a lot of progress made in building codes and construction standards, women’s and residents’ knowledge – and their ‘ways of knowing’ – are not well represented in this process and are underserved by our approaches.”

Liel said that while more than half of U.S. households – about 60% among Black households – have female heads, women continue to be underrepresented in the building engineering, architecture, and construction professions, as well as in the development of standards and policies that govern design, construction, permitting, and inspection of homes.

“And despite decades of advances, houses still remain particularly vulnerable to damage from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and other hazards,” she said. “This idea for this research argues that the problem of underrepresentation of women and women of color in the building industry and the problem of inadequate disaster resilience of housing are indeed linked together closely.”

Liel has conducted extensive structural resilience research in her career. However, this time she is approaching those questions through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens. The goal of this project, she said, would be to use focus groups and other activities to better understand perspectives around seismic upgrades and what makes a home habitable after an earthquake. Ideally, the information gathered could be used to improve building codes or shape construction standards over the next few decades.

“Safe, disaster-resilient housing is critical to our way of life, prosperity and sense of security,” she said. “I am really excited to start this project and see where the research goes with these new perspectives included.”

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Science Friday interviews Abbie Liel on infrastructure resilience

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 22:50:21 +0000

Science Friday interviews Abbie Liel on infrastructure resilience Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/25/2022 - 15:50

Professor Abbie Liel was interviewed by Science Friday, a weekly NPR program dedicated to science and technology.

She discusses bridge infrastructure and new ways of building more resilient structures in a segment produced following the recent bridge collapse in Pittsburgh.

Liel's research focuses on ways to make communities safer and more resilient in the face of natural hazards.

Listen to the interview at Science Friday

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CEAE Professor Abbie Liel Awarded ASCE SEI Fellowship

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 17:19:50 +0000

CEAE Professor Abbie Liel Awarded ASCE SEI Fellowship Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/11/2018 - 10:19

Dr. Abbie Liel of ��ſ��2023��¼’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering will advance to the title of Fellow within the American Society of Civil Engineers Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) at the annual Structures Congress in April 2019. This title honors Dr. Liel as a leader and mentor in the profession of structural engineering. Dr. Liel is well known for her contributions to structural engineering education and research on extreme loading, such as that due to earthquakes and snow.

The SEI is committed to improving the field of structural engineering by reinforcing the relationship between academic research and the engineering industry. At the annual Structures Congress, over 1200 structural engineers meet to discuss and exhibit innovations in the industry. Dr. Liel and the other new Fellows will be honored at this event. Dr. Liel will become our department’s only current SEI Fellow.

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