Oral Presentation

GEER (Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance) mobilized several teams following the February 6th 2023 Turkiye M7.8 and M7.7 events to make observations of the geological and geotechnical impacts. This Turkish-American collaboration fielded both in-person and virtual teams to complement each other. The objective was to collect perishable data and learn as much from these events as possible. The loss of life was catastrophic in these events exceeding 50,000 in Turkiye and additional lives lost in neighboring Syria. Nonetheless, these events have provided the global earthquake engineering community with a wealth of information on surface fault rupture, strong ground motions, liquefaction and lateral spreading, rock fall and slope stability, and the performance of earth dams, bridges, highways, buildings, ports, and other engineered features in the built environment that were subjected to seismic hazards. This talk will summarize the GEER observations and a path forward for the earthquake engineering community given this new information.