The John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center

The John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center was established to promote research and education in earthquake engineering. Through its activities, our understanding of earthquakes and their effects on facilities and structures is continuously improving. Faculty and students at the Center conduct research, provide instruction, publish reports and articles, and conduct seminars and conferences. The Center also provides financial support for students.

The Blume Center is centrally located on the Stanford campus and is home to over forty research students and scholars. It contains a library, classrooms, laboratories, and office space for students, research faculty, and visiting scholars. It houses the Structural Engineering and Geomechanics Laboratories for testing and characterization of structural and geotechnical materials and components, and a laboratory for advanced sensor development. The structural laboratory includes two servo-hydraulic MTS universal testing machines (90 and 220 kN capacities), several hydraulic actuators, two servo-hydraulic shake tables, a MTS Testar IIm digital controller and 407 analog controller, a National Instruments LabView data acquisition system, a strong-floor and column reaction frame, and a full complement of displacement and acceleration transducers and other electronic instruments. The geomechanics and structural teaching laboratories include a 4.5 kN testing machine, a small shake table, two triaxial loading frames, test machines for unconfined compression, simple shear and consolidation, and equipment for soil classification and compaction. In addition, an Advanced Sensing Research Laboratory was recently opened. Research at the new laboratory is focusing on interdisciplinary research and development of sensing devices utilizing wireless and MEMS-based technologies and the application of wireless sensing for damage detection, structural health monitoring and control.

The Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE)

The Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE) was established to conduct interdepartmental research on the use of advanced computer techniques for improved integration of the facility development (architecture-engineering-construction) process. The Center research will lead to the development of new methodologies and prototype tools to provide integration throughout the lifecycle of the facility from preliminary design to detailed design to analysis to construction to management of the completed facility.

The Center consists of faculty and students from several areas of the Departments of Civil Engineering and Computer Science, working in partnership with leading practitioners drawn from both developers and users of computer-aided engineering and project management tools for facility engineering. A key objective for the center is to help create and maintain undergraduate and graduate engineering curricula that embody the state of the art for the important engineering analysis, design, and management tools of the future. The Center provides an unmatched vehicle for Civil Engineering faculty and students to help influence and stay in touch with rapidly changing technologies that affect the future of engineering practice.

The National Performance of Dams Program (NPDP)

The National Performance of Dams Program (NPDP) is a cooperative effort of dam engineers and safety professionals in the U.S. and Canada to create an information resource on the performance of dams. The objectives of the NPDP are to retrieve, archive, and disseminate information on the performance of dams.

The NPDP creates an information track that facilitates the evaluation and use of dam performance data to improve methods of design and rehabilitation, and the development of effective public policy.

The NPDP will provide policy makers with information on the performance of dams that is comparable to data available to professionals in other fields involving public health and safety. Information on public health, such as the rise in tuberculosis cases or the increase in the number of HIV-positive individuals, provides lawmakers and administrators with valuable input to public policy decisions. A goal of the NPDP is to develop resources that will elevate dam safety to a similar level.