The Lamont 75th Anniversary lectures highlight distinguished alums and former staff as they present their groundbreaking research and reflect on what makes LDEO unique.
On October 18, 2024, LDEO presents:
How a seismologist got involved with NYC’s climate challenges: Is there a sustainable way out?
with Dr. Klaus H. Jacob, Special Research Scientist, Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Lamont celebrates this year its 75th anniversary. Of these 75 years, I had the luck and privilege to experience 56 years as active researcher at Lamont. Starting as post-doc in seismology in 1968, I pursued opportunities, some serendipitous, to do field work in Nevada (1968); El Salvador (1970); the Aleutian Island Arc of Alaska (1971-1985); the Lower Himalaya of Pakistan (1972-75), all in seismically active regions, and some volcanically too. When returning, I often wondered what an earthquake would do to the densely developed NYC metro region. So, I teamed up with other Lamont seismologists who had studied and seismically monitored that intraplate area. NSF put out a request for proposal for a National Center for Earthquake Engineering (NCEER), and a consortium between LDEO Seismology, and engineers from Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, RPI and SUNY won a 10-year contract. We worked on seismic building and bridge codes for NYC, NY State, and the US; we quantified the impacts of a magnitude 5, 6 or 7 quake on NYC. NASA/GISS scientists heard of the results and asked: can you do similar impact research for extreme climate events on NYC? So, we teamed up in an NSF-funded (for 3 years) Metro East Coast Consortium (MEC) for Climate Change Research. We invited regional infrastructure operators like MTA, PANYNJ and others as stakeholders. Before I knew, I wrote a Climate Change (CC) Model Adaptation Plan for the MTA, cooperating with its 5 MTA divisions. NYSERDA was impressed and funded CLIMAID, another CU-et-al. East-coast university consortium. I took on the infrastructure sector. Our CLIMAID analysis of the impacts of a 100-year hurricane on NYC’s subway system was published in 2011, one year before superstorm Sandy eerily verified our modeled subway flooding. It earned me the dubious media name “Cassandra of NYC”. The rest is history, including teaching for several years of CU graduate courses on Disaster Risk Management and Planning Urban Resilience at SIPA, GSAPP, SPS, CUGSJ; later just guest lectures; and working with professional organizations for architects and urban planners (AIA), engineers (ASCE), and the media, to raise awareness on the urgency and need for climate change adaptation and how to build disaster resilient cities. My ultimate insight: Managed Retreat from coasts threatened by sea level rise and storms is the only SUSTAINABLE option, a socially, politically and financially hard nut to crack!.
Host: Dr. Steven L. Goldstein, Interim Director, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
The Earth Science Colloquium Series, sponsored by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DEES), provides a lively forum for discussing a wide variety of topics within the Earth sciences and related fields. Colloquia are attended by the full range of scientific and technical staff at LDEO. Colloquium attendance is required of all pre-orals DEES graduate students. The Colloquium Series supports the Lamont Seminar Diversity Initiative.
