By Gabe DiMaio
Buffalo, NY – Engineers from the UB's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, or MCEER, have returned from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Specifically the UB team looked at bridges and engineered structures in and around the Gulfport Mississippi area.
Gilberto Mosqueda is the leader of the team. He said they wanted to correlate similarities between the damages as a result of the Hurricane and what they have seen from earthquakes.
Assessing the damage to the structures, in some cases before they were torn down, Mosqueda said they will try use the data to figure what forces were applied near the coast so they could model things to withstand the damage.
Some of that information was provided by the victims of the hurricane.
The detailed information collected during the five day research mission is being posted on the MCEER Website. You can find a link at WBFO.org.