"Turkey and Syria After the Earthquakes” is a series of four panel discussions curated by Collective Action for Readiness, Recovery, and Resilience (CARRRE), a collective of US-based Turkish-American architects and academics. CARRRE aims to amplify awareness among a global audience regarding the catastrophic repercussions of these earthquakes, and to provide agency to architects, planners, engineers, municipalities, and builders on the ground by assisting with local relief efforts, sharing professional expertise, and aiding in the development of long-term rebuilding strategies. These panels aim to provide an international platform for learning, debate, and actionable projects.
“Long-Term Recovery (2): Building Back Better” is the fourth panel in CARRRE’s four-part series. This panel will examine the challenges and opportunities that arise in connection with the long-term, large-scale planning initiatives and resilient rebuilding of cities and communities in post-earthquake areas. The speakers will address conventional post-disaster planning strategies and building techniques, rapid damage assessment tools developed through AI, and focus on alternative approaches developed for Turkey and other countries.
Key topics include:
1. Infrastructure - the movement of people and things (utilities, water and waste systems, food production and distribution, transportation, communication, and geology).
2. Planning - Long-term, large-scale planning initiatives and resilient rebuilding of cities and communities in post-earthquake areas.
3. Housing - temporary and permanent (deploy/redeploy systems, temporary leading to permanent housing (transitional), and government, private, and NGO policies and efforts).
4. Community Facilities (education, religious, play, medical, mental health, and spaces for social services).
5. Cultural and Historical Preservation (documentation of buildings and urban fabric, restoration technologies, regional minorities, and identities).
6. Sustainability and Resiliency (technologies, strategies, and case studies).
Panelists:
1. Prof. Ayşegül Askan, Engineer; Executive Board Member, Earthquake Engineering Association of Turkey (EEAT); Prof. at Middle East Technical University (METU), Dept. of Civil Engineering
2. Karim Elgendy, Urban Sustainability and Climate Expert; Associate Director, Buro Happold, Associate Fellow, Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs); Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute in D.C.
3. Dr. Yasuaki Onoda, Architect and Planner; Lecturer at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design; Vice President, Architectural Institute of Japan; 2022 Architectural Institute of Japan Research Award
4. Ülge Ugurlu, Senior Project Adviser and Local Government Expert, VNG International, International Cooperation Agency of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities
The panel will simultaneously take place in NYC at the AIA NY - Center for Architecture (registration needed), in Istanbul at Salt Beyoglu (walk-in, no registration needed), and online (registration needed).
For online registration, please follow the instructions on the AIA website.
Aysegul Askan is a professor of civil engineering, earthquake studies and applied mathematics at Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. She received her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006 with her thesis focusing on full waveform inversion for seismic velocity structures. Dr. Askan’s field of expertise includes engineering seismology, earthquake engineering, scientific computing and numerical methods, effects of simulated ground motions on structures, multi-scale seismic risk and loss estimations in urban regions, structural reliability and parameter estimation problems for site characterization. She holds several administrative positions in education and research. She is the department head of Earthquake Studies program and vice-director of Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences at METU. She is the current general secretary of Earthquake Engineering Association of Turkey and a member of the National Disaster and Emergency Consultancy Board of Turkey. She is a board member COSMOS and European Seismological Commission. Dr. Askan has led and participated in several EU projects, Turkish-Japanese bilateral projects and national projects focusing on seismic hazard and risk problems. She has supervised more than 35 graduate students at METU since 2007. The list of publications by Dr. Askan includes 58 peer-reviewed international journal articles and 3 book chapters with an h-index of 22.
Moderators: CARRRE Members: Inanc Eray (Istanbul), Ferda Kolatan (New York City), and Kutan Ayata (Los Angeles)
Registration: The panel will simultaneously take place in NYC at the AIA NY - Center for Architecture (registration needed), in Istanbul at Salt Beyoglu (walk-in, no registration needed), and online (registration needed). For online registration, please follow the instructions on the AIA website.
The organizers are strongly encouraging that attendees make donations to Turkish Philanthropy Funds in support of the planning and rebuilding efforts.
If you have any questions, thoughts, or recommendations, please get in touch.
