METU Earthquake Engineering Research Center (EERC) was founded in 1976 as a multidisciplinary institution and one of the oldest research centers in the area in order to conduct scientific and professional research studies on earthquake engineering, engineering seismology and socio-economic aspects of earthquakes.
Directed by Prof. Dr. Ahmet Yakut from the Department of Civil Engineering, the Center involves many academic members from the Departments of civil engineering, geological engineering, engineering sciences and statistics. Being part of the Civil Engineering Department, the Center has direct access to the testing facilities of the structural mechanics, geotechnical and construction material laboratories and uses them to determine the seismic behavior of structural elements and soil.
The areas of expertise of the Center include seismic rehabilitation of structures, simplified nonlinear static procedures, seismic risk, and hazard assessment methods, earthquake insurance, stochastic models for seismic damage estimation, building instrumentation and monitoring, pseudo-dynamic testing, geotechnical earthquake engineering, signal processing, stochastic dynamic analysis, strong ground-motion seismology, source kinematics and simulation and earthquake-resistant construction materials.
The following activities are carried out within EERC, one of METU’s most active research centers:
- Many technical journal articles based on scientific and professional research conducted within the center, as well as international conference papers, book chapters, and reports are published by the members of the Center,
- National and international workshops and conferences are organized to disseminate the latest developments in earthquake engineering studies to the public,
- Cooperation activities are being carried out by establishing close relations with state institutions and organizations in order to shed light on Turkey’s earthquake-related problems,
- The members of the Center join many international research projects funded by NATO and the EU.
EERC also plays an important role in professional structural rehabilitation projects by conducting field observations, scientific studies, and technical evaluations after the devastating earthquakes in Turkey. In this regard, reports on the earthquake that happened in Izmir last October and the subsequent Aegean Sea earthquakes were prepared and shared with the public.
Further details about the Center and the studies conducted in the Center can be found at https://eerc.metu.edu.tr/en.
