For University of California, Berkeley Professor and former
Architecture Department Chair Mary Comerio, 2010 is shaping up
to be a busy year. When the magnitude-8.8 earthquake hit Chile
on February 27, the architect and disaster-recovery expert was
in Haiti on a mission relating to that nation’s January 12
magnitude-7.0 quake. As a consultant to the post-disaster branch
of the United Nation’s Environment Program, Comerio was brought
in to identify and strategize recovery issues. She also assisted
the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) in
collecting scientific data. Comerio’s research over the past two
decades has focused on the costs and benefits of seismic
rehabilitation for existing buildings, post-disaster recovery
and reconstruction, and loss modeling. The Architect’s
Newspaper: Recent events have us wondering how we would fare if
a recent study from the U.S. Geological Survey—that there is a
99.7 percent chance of California having a magnitude-6.7 or
larger earthquake during the next 30 yea