The Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC)’s annual convention was held online on December 2-4, 2020. The dual-track technical program was filled with over 30 compelling presentations, starting with an opening plenary presentation by Greg Deierlein, SimCenter co-Director and Professor of Civil Engineering at Stanford University, “NHERI SimCenter: Computational Modeling and Simulation for Natural Hazards Engineering” about SimCenter tools that support research in natural hazards engineering. His presentation emphasized the relevance of computational modeling and simulation to the profession of structural engineering, and its role in designing for the future: to inform policy and land-use decisions. He presented illustrative applications that demonstrated how a large number of computations could be executed in a reasonable amount of time with SimCenter’s pelicun tool, and how scenarios of regional simulations using SimCenter’s rWHALE tool can inform retrofit or land-use decisions, and recovery planning.
 

SimCenter was actively involved in the “Multi-Hazard Inventory/Data Collection Workshop,” hosted by FEMA Region IX and a multi-agency planning team on January 5-7, 2021. Greg Deierlein, SimCenter co-Director, provided a presentation about multi-hazard inventories and demonstrated how pelicun, a SimCenter computational tool, was used by researchers in the recently completed PEER-CEA project “Quantifying the Performance of Retrofit of Cripple Walls and Sill Anchorage in Single-Family Wood-Frame Buildings.” Professor Deierlein, Matt Schoettler, SimCenter Associate Director, and Charles Wang, Lead Developer for the SimCenter’s BRAILS software, were on the planning team and moderated breakout sessions. Adam Zsarnóczay, lead developer for SimCenter's PBE application and pelicun, also participated in the workshop which was attended by risk managers, consultants, researchers, and practitioners from California, Nevada, Utah, Washington, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, and Hawaii. The goal of the workshop was to have attendees learn about community asset inventory best practices, collaborate in a variety of working groups, and walk away with the foundations for their own data collection, data management, or inventory plan.