The Sibalaya flowslide initiated by the 28 September 2018 MW 7.5 Palu-Donggala, Indonesia earthquake

Research Needs, Challenges, and Strategic Approaches for Natural Hazards and Disaster Reconnaissance

“…earthquakes in the U.S. and abroad (Bray et al, 2019). In 2011, GEER's scope was expanded to include the study of the geotechnical aspects of other natural hazard events such as hurricanes, floods, and landslides (e.g., Dashti et al, 2014;Wartman et al, 2016;Hughes and Morales Vélez, 2017;Gallant et al, 2020;Montgomery et al, 2020). GEER authorizes research missions based upon (i) the opportunity to learn about new scientific hypotheses or engineering models, (ii) the availability of additional field data (e.g., ground motion recordings) to supplementary data gathered in the reconnaissance, and (iii), for international (non-U.S.) events, the potential for a similar event to occur in the future in the U.S (Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance [GEER], 2014).…”

“…During the past several years, NSF began supporting other similar "extreme event reconnaissance (or research), " or EER, organizations including StEER (Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance), OSEEER (Operations and Systems Engineering Extreme Events Research), SSEER (Social Science Extreme Events Research), ISEEER (Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Extreme Events Research), NEER (Nearshore Extreme Events Reconnaissance), and SUstainable Material Management Extreme Events Reconnaissance (SUMMEER). These EER organizations are coordinated by CONVERGE (Peek et al, 2020), which seeks to advance ethically-grounded (Gaillard and Peek, 2019), scientifically rigorous, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary extreme events research.…”

“…Such models can be safely interrogated to extensive detail by geographically distributed research teams-an aspect that allows investigators the time and vision to collaboratively continue to discover new and important aspects of the impact of the surveyed event (Olsen and Kayen, 2013;Olsen et al, 2015). These types of terrestrial data sets are increasingly being fused with broader scale satellite imagery to appreciate the regional context for damage at a specific site (e.g., Yamazaki and Matsuoka, 2007;Eguchi et al, 2008;Rathje and Franke, 2016;Gallant et al, 2020). Modeling and simulation lie at the center of the natural hazard community's broader goal to understand, simulate, and predict the performance of built, natural, and social systems during and after natural hazards events (Edge et al, 2020).…”

Natural Hazards Reconnaissance With the NHERI RAPID Facility

“…In November 2018, the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) association mobilized a team that arrived in the affected region and conducted 6 days of extensive fieldwork (Mason et al, 2019;Gallant et al, 2020). The GEER team included 5 U.S.-based and 15 Indonesianbased investigators.…”

Field reconnaissance data from GEER investigation of the 2018 MW 7.5 Palu-Donggala earthquake

“… The M w 7.5 Palu-Donggala earthquake occurred on 28 September 2018 and caused significant damage in Palu City and the surrounding Central Sulawesi region of Indonesia. The earthquake initiated a series of catastrophic landslides (classified as flowslides ) [1 , 2] , collapsed buildings, and generated tsunami waves that impacted Palu Bay's coast. The earthquake claimed over 4000 lives, making it the deadliest natural disaster of 2018.…”