Title: Towards the Next Generation of Data-Driven and Physics-Informed Procedures in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering
Abstract: Performance-based engineering (PBE) is widely recognized as the leading framework for assessing the safety and resilience of infrastructure under extreme events. Over the past six decades, earthquake engineering has progressed from deterministic approaches—focused on a few conservative scenarios—to performance-based methods that explicitly account for uncertainty. While PBE has driven many important advances, key challenges remain. Emerging data-driven methods offer new opportunities to advance performance-based earthquake engineering, particularly for geotechnical systems. Yet their success depends on combining physical principles with data-driven tools, since design scenarios often involve extreme events—such as the “Maximum Credible Earthquake” specified in seismic codes—where extrapolation beyond available data is unavoidable.
This talk presents recent advances in next-generation data-driven and physics-informed approaches for geotechnical earthquake engineering. It highlights the development of nonergodic ground motion models that capture repeatable source, path, and site effects, leading to improved uncertainty quantification in regions such as California and Turkey and concludes with a forward-looking perspective on the future of performance-based engineering in the era of computational and data-driven innovation.
Biography: Dr. Chenying Liu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also earned his Ph.D. through the joint program in Computational Science and Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering. He holds an M.Sc. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University and a B.Eng. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research focuses on machine learning, AI-driven, and physics-informed approaches for extreme events engineering and performance-based design, with applications in the design and condition assessment of critical infrastructure. Dr. Liu has published over 30 articles in leading journals and conferences and has received several awards, including the Earthquake Spectra Outstanding Reviewer Award and the Outstanding Geomaterials Research Award from Georgia Tech. He collaborates with multiple institutions across the U.S., including the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center. He serves as a reviewer for journals such as Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA), ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (JGGE), ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems (JRUES), Earthquake Spectra, and Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering (SDEE). He has also been appointed Guest Editor for Frontiers in Built Environment.
To join virtually: Zoom
Contact: cliu662@gatech.edu
Website: —
Recording: Zoom Recording (will be available within a week after the seminar)