The full-scale laboratory: the practice of post-earthquake reconnaissance missions and their contribution to earthquake engineering

It is increasingly apparent that the site of a damaging earthquake is undoubtedly a full-scale laboratory, in which significant discoveries can be made by keen observers seismologists, geologists, engineers, sociologists and economists. As our knowledge of the complexity of earthquakes has increased we have become more and more aware of the limitations which nature has imposed on our capacity to predict, on purely theoretical grounds, the performance of engineering structures, of the ground itself or of a community. It is the long-term study of earthquakes and fieldwork that offers the unique opportunity to develop a knowledge of the actual situation created by an earthquake disaster... It is field observations and measurement that allow the interaction of ideas and the testing of theories... Much computer effort has been devoted to solving problems based on guessed parameters ... more data from field observation and measurement are now required.