On the basis of recommendations made by the Earthquake Spectra Editorial Board, the EERI Board of Directors has selected the paper, “Landmark Data Set from the Building Nonstructural Components and Systems (BNCS) Project,” Earthquake Spectra, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 1239-1259, by Elide Pantoli (M.EERI,2012), Michelle C. Chen, Tara C. Hutchinson (M.EERI,1995), Rodrigo Astroza (M.EERI,2017), Joel P. Conte (M.EERI,1990), Hamed Ebrahimian, José I. Restrepo, and Xiang Wang (M.EERI,2010), as the Outstanding Earthquake Spectra Paper of 2016 (Vol. 32).

The Earthquake Spectra Editorial Board included the following statement in their recommendation: "Rarely do we see full scale testing, to the point of collapse, of structural systems including nonstructural elements. This paper sequence describes this undertaking from the design of the experiments through to the presentation and analysis of the data. The test sequence was essentially repeated twice, once with and again without seismic isolators. The authors present the data on structural response and performance, as well as the response of the non-structural components, which are linked do the structural responses. The authors describe this as a landmark data set, and I expect they are correct about this. The impact of the work is already evident from strong citations, which are among the top for this year in the journal."

Lead author, Elide Pantoli (pictured) received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering at the University of Bologna (Italy), and her PhD in Structural Engineering at UCSD. Her research dealt with the seismic behavior of nonstructural components, with a focus on precast concrete cladding. She is currently working at Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates in Emeryville, California.

The award will be presented at the EERI 2018 Annual Meeting to be held Thursday, June 28, 2018, at the 11th National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Los Angeles. 

https://www.eeri-members.org/pulse?cat=1865#outstanding-earthquake-spectra-paper-award-announced