Date:
Introductory Program (September 6-7, 2010) Limit 70 participants
Advanced Program (September 5-9, 2010) Limit: 110 participants Location: University Quisqueya, Haut Turgeau, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Registration:
Introductory Program: 3,000 gourdes ; Advanced Program: 5,000 gourdes
Payment must be made in advance to the UniQ bursar’s office; questions about payment can be directed to Tingue Wolfield (509-3844-9135 or tingue [dot] wolfield {at] gmail [dot} com ).
To register, visit https://www.ubevents.org/event/UniQ-UB2 or contact one of the seminar directors. Registration will close when the maximum capacity for each program is reached. Confirmation of registration will be sent via email.
Instructors:
André Filiatrault, Ph.D., Eng., Professor of Civil Engineering, University at Buffalo and MCEER Director
André Filiatrault is a licensed civil engineer and a professor of civil engineering at the University at Buffalo. He led a team of 10 French-speaking engineers and architects in conducting structural safety assessments of critical facilities, including hospitals, food distribution warehouses and other buildings in Port-au-Prince within days of the January 2010 earthquake. In one week, his team inspected 115 buildings and established a process for building assessments that remains in use in Haiti today.
Pierre Fouché, Ph.D. Candidate, University at Buffalo
Pierre Fouché is a Haitian-born civil engineer, a graduate of UniQ, a Fulbright Scholar and a Ph.D. candidate in earthquake engineering at the University at Buffalo. Fouché’s current research interests are in multi-hazard engineering and design of bridge structures. For his Ph.D. dissertation, he is developing an integrated and cost-effective bridge system that aims to offer a single optimized solution to the constraints of multiple hazards.
Wassim Ghannoum, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin
Wassim Ghannoum recently joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin where he teaches design and behavior of reinforced concrete structures, and conducts research on earthquake induced damage to concrete structures. He has several years of structural design experience, and is a member of the American Concrete Institute’s committee on “Seismic Repair and Rehabilitation.” He participated in the week-long structural assessment mission in Haiti led by Prof. André Filiatrault and is a member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) committee coordinating technical assistance to Haiti.
Seminar Directors
Tingue Wolfield, Civil Engineer, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Architecture, UniQ
Phone: (509) 3844-9135
Email: tingue [dot] wolfield {at] gmail [dot} com
Sofia Tangalos
MCEER, University at Buffalo (USA)
Phone: 00 + 1 (716) 645-1157
Email: tangalos {at] buffalo [dot} edu
Description:
The second in a series of professional development earthquake engineering seminars presented by Haiti’s University Quisqueya (UniQ) and the University at Buffalo’s MCEER will offer two concurrent tracks—an introductory program and an advanced program—for Haitian structural engineers and architects this September.
Developed in consultation with UniQ faculty and based on Haitian construction practices, each program includes hands-on exercises, design examples and in-field demonstrations. All lectures and seminar materials are presented in French.
The Introductory Program (September 6-7, 2010), which was first offered in May 2010, will be offered again due to high demand. Entitled, “Introduction to Earthquake Engineering and Post-Earthquake Building Assessment,” this program aims to help Haitian engineers gain knowledge of fundamental earthquake engineering principles for retrofit of damaged facilities and design of new construction. Participants will also learn how to conduct rapid building assessments using the U.S. standard, Applied Technology Council’s ATC-20 Procedures for Postearthquake Safety Evaluation of Buildings.
The Advanced Program (September 5-9, 2010), entitled “Seismic Design Load Calculations and the Seismic Design of Concrete and Masonry Buildings,” will provide in-depth instruction on design procedures, construction techniques and structural behaviors of reinforced concrete elements and confined masonry buildings in Haiti. Illustrative examples will be given. In addition, there will be a hands-on demonstration of the construction of a confined masonry wall with the help of a trained Haitian mason. Individuals enrolling in the Advanced Program are required to have already completed the Introductory Program.
Both programs will be held at the University Quisqueya, Haut Turgeau, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Returning instructors André Filiatrault, Ph.D., Eng., Professor of Civil Engineering, University at Buffalo and MCEER Director, and Pierre Fouché, Ph.D. Candidate, University at Buffalo, will be joined by Wassim Ghannoum, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin.
Both Filiatrault and Ghannoum were members of the initial United Nations’-designated Emergency Engineering Support Unit that conducted structural safety assessments on hospitals, food distribution warehouses and government facilities in Haiti shortly following the January 12 earthquake.
The seminars are a component of a longer-term educational initiative included in a Memorandum of Understanding signed by UniQ and UB/MCEER to promote academic exchange and cooperation over the next three years.
Seminar Summary:
Introductory Program: September 6-7, 2010
“Introduction to Earthquake Engineering and Post-Earthquake Building Assessment”
Registration fee is 3,000 gourdes
Limit of 70 participants
Advanced Program: September 5-9, 2010
“Seismic Design Load Calculations and the Seismic Design of Concrete and Masonry Buildings”
Guatemala Emergency Appeal after Tropical Storm Agatha
Searching for survivors in a mudslide. Photo by Mercado Global
Dear AIDG Friends and Supporters,
Tropical storm Agatha, the first major storm of the 2010 Hurricane season has slammed Guatemala with devastation not seen since Hurricane Stan in 2005. The destruction has hit every department in Guatemala. According to Guatemalan government, tens of thousands of people are now homeless. Roads, bridges, water and food distribution have been severely disrupted. AIDG immediately responded by helping dig out houses in the Quetzaltenango department where we are based, but most of the damage has happened near Lake Atitlan.
AIDG is sent a team down last week to work with the Lake Atitlan based organization Mercado Global to assess damage and coordinate repairs on water systems for communities. Water is a critical need as pipes have been washed away and local water systems have been damaged. Here is a quote from Steve Crowe our Technology Director about the water system in Xaquijya.
“Things got a little more complicated when we walked the pipeline from the distribution tank to the springs. They had just assumed that it was broken in one part near the springs, but as we walked we passed 5 landslides where the pipe had broken . . . The complicated part would be in protecting the pipe that we put in; we’d have to cross those same landslide areas, which would be high risk for sure.”
He estimates a need for an immediate $30,000 to aid in water system rebuilding and another $15,000 for us to help repair hydro-electric systems damaged in the storm.
For AIDG, the twin disasters in both Haiti and Guatemala present the greatest challenge we have ever faced. We are supporting responses to both a once-in-a-decade storm and a once-in-a-century earthquake within a few months of each other. As most of you know, AIDG is not a direct relief agency so we have no budget for emergencies like this and rely on gifts at the time of the event to respond. But in our focus on infrastructure, we play a vital role in disaster response and development of community resiliency. We look to you to help us continue this work.
We need your help to respond to this disaster.
If you cannot give now, we ask that you consider giving a little bit of time to AIDG. One major source of funding for AIDG’s disaster response in Haiti has been corporate donations. This comes largely based on employee recommendations to a corporate giving department or to a small business owner. Please consider giving a lunch break to call your company’s charitable division to see if they have funds ($500 - $10,000) you could recommend to AIDG. Email us an introduction and we will be glad to send them detailed information on our programs. Corporate giving departments largely operate based on employee suggestions.
Thank you all for everything you have done over the years to help us build this program, and our capacity to respond in these emergencies. Please hold the families affected by this tragedy in your hearts and thoughts.
In the days and weeks following the January 12th earthquake, relief organizations and redevelopment efforts swarmed into Haiti—fueled by the immediacy to rescue survivors and develop temporary living scenarios. Now, with the disaster out of the headlines and the rainy season looming, opinions and direction are swirling as to “how” to construct a new Haiti. Will social venture prevail? How will the Haitian community be justly represented? How can the cycle of poverty be reversed and a more self-sufficient economy nurtured? Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, and Peter Haas, founder of Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group [AIDG], explain their perspectives, fears and truths surrounding the epic redevelopment effort.
At approximately 4:55 pm Eastern on Tuesday Port Au Prince experienced a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, with aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.7. There is widespread damage to infrastructure with numerous collapsed buildings. It is anticipated there will be a high casualty rate
The National Palace has collapsed (eyewitness photo)
The UN headquarters has been seriously damaged (source: UN)
The Hotel Montana has sustained collapse with 200 missing (source: associated press france)
A Hospital has collapsed (source:NYtimes)
We are currently developing opportunities for AIDG to aid in reconstruction with the help of partners. We will make another announcement on this shortly.
As you all know we are a small organization. We require some basic additional budget resources immediately to help run an assessment that will determine this longer term response aimed at infrastructure and reconstruction. If possible mail checks to:
AIDG
P.O. Box 104
Weston, MA 02493
We will actually receive these funds faster than online donations. We will be running a larger campaign in concert with our reconstruction announcement.
For those wishing to have an immediate direct impact on populations in Port Au Prince we are recommending supporting the medical response teams of Partners In Health. www.pih.org They are working with a field hospital set up by the UNDP that immediately needs pain meds, bandages and other medical supplies.
We ask you all to hold Haiti in your hearts and prayers as this tragedy unfolds.
Bill Easterly author of “White Man’s Burden” and ideological nemesis of Jeffrey Sachs gives the top 10 wrong ways to write about poor people.
My favorites.
6. Discuss only income, health, access to clean water, and literacy. Leave it to anthropologists to cover areas like happiness, traditions, ceremonies, festivals, friendships, kinship, love between men and women, or love between parents and children.
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8. Don’t show pictures of poor men, who make your audience think of drunkards, wife-beaters, or janjaweed.
9. These topics are only for Marxists: power, class, discrimination, oppression, or history.
Along the same lines, check out actor Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, Constantine, In America, Amistad) reading Binyavanga Wainana’s must-read article How (not) to write about Africa.
The non-profit TED has selected AIDG’s Executive Director Peter Haas as one of 20 inaugural Senior Fellows. The TED Senior Fellows program is designed to bring together young world-changers and trailblazers from the arts, science, entrepreneurship, the NGO sector and education. As part of its commitment to TED, AIDG will be launching an exciting new initiative in our technology research and development program in 2010 that will transform our ability to do research with local and university partners. We’ll be able to share more details next year.
Two of our favorite bloggers Erik Hersman (Co-founder of Ushahidi.com; blogger, AfriGadget and White African) and Juliana Rotich (Co-founder, Ushahidi.com; blogger, Afromusing and Global Voices) are also 2010 senior Fellows.
Erik Hersman of Afrigadget documents low-tech entrepreneurialism in Africa. Specifically he looks at ingenuity born of necessity, “tech that keeps economies on life support”. Raised in Sudan (until the war got bad), Kenya, and then again Sudan, he’s a bit of a tech anthropologist searching for Africans solutions to African problems.
From wikipedia
Ushahidi (Kiswahili for “testimony” or “witness”) was a website created in the aftermath of Kenya’s disputed 2007 presidential election that collected eyewitness reports of violence sent in by email and text-message and placed them on a Google map. It is also the name of the open source software developed for that site, which has since been improved, released freely, and used for a number of similar projects.
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The software has since been used to track violence in Congo and pharmacy stockouts in Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi, and monitor elections in Mexico and India, among other projects. It was also used by Al Jazeera to collect eyewitness reports during the 2008-2009 Gaza War.
In addition to Pete, Eric and Juliana, here are the 17 other fellows:
Taghi Amirani (Iran/UK) - Documentary filmmaker, Amirani Films
Rachel Armstrong (UK) - Teaching fellow, The Bartlett School of Architecture; physician; science-fiction author
Frederick Balagadde (Uganda/US) - Research scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; co-inventor of the microchemostat, a medical diagnostic chip
April Karen Baptiste (Trinidad) - Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Colgate University
AIDG would also like to announce that in response to the current dire situation at LakeAtitlan, we will be making a special investment in another GuateVerde team that is helping address the issue and support the communities most effected. Lake Atitlan, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Guatemala, has suffered from a harmful cyanobacterial bloom in the second half of 2009. The blue-green algae has spread across the surface of the lake covering it in a thick green scum. Local news reports cite sewage, agricultural runoff, and erosion related to deforestation as causes of the bloom.
Duration: 2 min 44 sec
The lake as it should be. Photo by Deborah Coleman
Flowercin/Altec, a team based out of Solola, will be working with the local municipality at the Lake to collect organic material (trash) and convert it into nutrient-rich and affordable organic fertilizer. Flowecin’s business was previously recognized in Technoserve’s Idea Tu Empresa competition in 2007.
We at AIDG love Lake Atitlan and hope that through Flowercin/Altec we can help in the effort to improve the conditions of the lake and all who rely on its health.
The activist, academic and co-founder of Global Voices shares a story about building cultural bridges, xenophilia and a little video game called War of Warcraft.
My Tweets from his talk
@EthanZ is talking about the importance of bridge figures when u encounter a new culture 2 help u embrace ur xenophilia #bif5
@EthanZ shows CNN photo of Chinese army crackdown on riots in Llasa. The version used crops out the rioters throwing rocks at Army vehicle
Former Prime Minister Pierre-Louise at the IDB investor meeting in Port Au Prince earlier this month with Former President Bill Clinton, President Rene Preval and Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno. Photo by Peter Haas AIDG
Haiti’s Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis was dismissed by the Haitian senate in late night voting. President Rene Preval has nomminated Jean Max Bellerive, the country’s planning and co-operation minister, to be her replacement.
Quotes on the dismissal:
From the Miami Herald:
” Pierre-Louis, in office for a year, said she has spent much of her tenure getting international support for Haiti after four back-to-back storms devastated the country last year, and it is too soon to see the results of her work.
Senators were not swayed.
But unlike the last censure of a Haitian prime minister — Jacques-Edouard Alexis in April 2008 following days of food riots — this one wasn’t as swift or orderly.
At times, chaos reigned: Lawmakers screamed and talked over one another in front a national television audience.
The Senate president often rang a small silver bell in a futile attempt to create order as the session stretched into Friday morning without a vote. The vote finally occured at about 12:15 a.m., long after Pierre-Louis’ Senate supporters had left, believing they had succeeded in preventing a vote.
“There is an error in the summons and everyone knows it,'’ said Sen. Youri Latortue, a Pierre-Louis supporter who last year successfully led the movement to oust Alexis.
But those lined up against Pierre-Louis weren’t moved by the constitutional arguments, nor her letter to the Senate president questioning the validity of the censure and informing him that she did not plan to attend the session.”
From Al Jazeera:
“The move to fire Pierre Louis comes days after Bill Clinton, the UN’s special envoy to Haiti and a former US president, told an investor conference in Port-au-Prince that Haiti’s political risk was lower than it had been in his lifetime.”
An Environment Ministry study in Baoruco and Independencia provinces (southwest) identified 23 communities where 200 people make 37,000 sacks of charcoal per month, a clandestine market worth RD$89.2 million (US$2.5 million) yearly.
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[The Cross-border Environmental Program report] details a simple yet effective chain to make, traffic and illegally market charcoal in Haiti and notes that the 200 producers are mostly of Haitian origin, helped by 12 Dominican truck drivers, to produce every month around 37,000 sacks, sold to less than five Haitian retailers, who gather on the west side of the lake, for subsequent transport and sale in Port au Prince.
“This production equals 445,788 sacks annually (27,300 tons) which is sold at RD$200 (US$5.55) per sack, generating an annual market of RD$89.2 million, US$2.5 million).” the study headed by the consultant Humberto Checo said.
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