Personal statement
Welcome to my university webpages.
I am a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Intelligent Infrastructure within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. My principal research interests are improving hazard and risk evaluations for natural perils, in particular earthquakes (engineering seismology and earthquake engineering). Through various knowledge exchange activities (including consultancies) I seek to apply my skills in practice, e.g. as an expert within seismic hazard assessments for high-value infrastructure. My teaching and administrative responsibilities include being departmental exchange coordinator.
I completed my PhD in engineering seismology in 2001 at Imperial College London, following a BSc. Hons (first class) undergraduate degree in Mathematics also at Imperial College London. Following two and a half years as a post-doctoral researcher (Research Associate) at Imperial, I was a senior engineering seismologist at BRGM (French Geological Survey) from 2004 until 2015 during which time I was involved in research, public service and commercial projects in many aspects of risk evaluation for various natural perils (e.g. I led BRGM's contribution to the multi-risk ThinkHazard! website from the GFDRR). From 2009 to 2014 I was a visiting professor at the Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, University of Iceland.
Please visit the Expertise tab for a list of my research interests and the Research tab, the Teaching tab and the Publications tab to obtain more details. A summary on the importance of my research for earthquake risk reduction can be read on Science Trends, an overview of this topic from 2021 is available for view here and some introductory slides are available for free download from figshare. As example of some research work, an article on the spatial correlation of earthquake ground motions is available here, which is part of a collaboration with Aon Impact Forecasting.
Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in research or knowledge exchange (e.g. consultancy or Knowledge Exchange Partnerships) collaborations. I am particularly interested to hear from fully-funded students interested in doing a PhD under my supervision and PhD holders looking to apply for post-doctoral fellowships (e.g. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships , Newton International Fellowships or Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowships). Before contacting me about PhDs please consult this page concerning applications ("How can I apply?" tab) and fees ("Fees & funding tab). Information on potential scholarships is available on this page (select "Postgraduate Research" in the "Level of study" drop-down menu).
Expertise
Has expertise in:
- Engineering seismology
- Earthquake ground motion prediction (e.g. Douglas and Edwards, 2016)
- Assessing and modifying ground-motion models (e.g. Brooks et al., 2020)
- Seismic hazard assessment, especially site-specific studies (e.g. Douglas et al., 2014)
- Local site effects, especially for rock sites (e.g. Douglas et al., 2009)
- High-frequency attenuation of ground motions (e.g. Douglas et al., 2010)
- Estimating site response (e.g. Volpini and Douglas, 2019)
- Site classification using proxies (e.g. Lemoine et al., 2012)
- Using macroseismic intensities (e.g. Rey et al., 2018)
- Ground motions from induced seismicity (e.g. Douglas et al., 2013)
- Prediction of ground-motion fields (e.g. Gehl et al., 2017)
- Using ground-motion simulations (e.g. Douglas and Aochi, 2016)
- Assessing spatial correlation of earthquake ground motions (e.g. Schiappapietra and Douglas, 2020)
- Operational Earthquake Forecasting (e.g. Douglas and Azarbakht, 2020)
- Strong-motion databases (e.g. Akkar et al., 2014)
- Processing of strong-motion records (e.g. Douglas and Boore, 2011)
- Earthquake engineering
- Multi-hazard risk assessments (e.g. Douglas, 2007)
- Nomograms (e.g. Douglas and Danciu, 2019)
- Repeat photography (rephoto) (e.g. currently applying method for risk communication in the project NET: New technologies and participatory approaches for disaster resilience)
Prizes and awards
- Young Researcher Prize (Prix du Jeune Chercheur)
- Recipient
- 9/2011
More prizes and awards
Qualifications
Chartered Scientist
Chartered Mathematician
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Member of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications
Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers
Member of the Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics
Member of the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team
Member of the European Association of Earthquake Engineering
Associate of the Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics
Member of the UK Alliance for Disaster Research
Research interests
Academic mission statement: My research group develops statistical and numerical models to improve the assessment of seismic hazard and risk in order to reduce losses due to future earthquakes worldwide.
To evaluate the potential impact of a natural peril (e.g. an earthquake) it is necessary to consider the following three aspects:
- hazard (e.g. how the ground shakes during an earthquake);
- vulnerability (e.g. how a building responds to this shaking); and
- exposure (e.g. how many of these buildings are in the zone of interest).
The combination of these three factors provides an estimate of the risk, which expresses the chance that a certain undesirable event (e.g. building collapse) may occur. It is important to distinguish between the hazard, which cannot be altered, and the risk, which can be reduced (mitigated) by lowering the vulnerability and exposure of the building stock as well as increasing the resilience of the community.
My research aims to improve earthquake risk evaluation for engineering purposes, in particular through the characterisation and, ideally, reduction of uncertainties in seismic hazard assessments. It is important that the hazard be neither over- nor under-estimated. Examples of the latter are dramatically displayed by damage to buildings that were constructed in accordance with the expected ground motion in the region. An over-estimated hazard leads to higher construction costs for seismic resistance, which consumes resources that could be better spent tackling other problems.
My research addresses various UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 9 'Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation' and SDG 11 'Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable', as well as the challenges highlighted in the UK Strategy for the Global Challenges Research Fund, in particular 'resilience and action on short-term environmental shocks and long-term environmental change' and 'sustainable cities and communities'. I wrote a crowdsourced brief on these topics in 2015. Concerning these topics, I am currently PI of a project funded by the Frontiers of Development programme on "Investigating approaches to encourage seismic retrofitting in less-developed countries"
I am particularly interested in problems related to hazard and risk assessments for the energy sector. For example, high-importance power facilities such as nuclear power plants must consider the impact of earthquakes (e.g. recent consultancy concerning Hinkley Point C, also see this journal article on the overall approach and this one for details). Another research focus is induced seismicity from projects in the geothermal and oil and gas sectors. Currently, I am a workpackage leader and joint technical lead of the H2020 TURNkey project improving operational earthquake forecasting, earthquake early warning and the rapid response to earthquakes.
As an engineering seismologist, one of my main interests is improving ground-motion prediction, i.e. providing better models of the shaking to expect at a site given a particular earthquake at a certain distance. Such models are a basis of seismic hazard assessment. I maintain a global compendium of published models, which now number many hundreds. An article on capturing epistemic uncertainties within ground-motion models has been published in association with my Theme Lecture at the 16th European Conference on Earthquake Engineering in June 2018. A video briefly summarising this work is also available.
Professional activities
- 37th General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission
- Participant
- 9/2021
- 37th General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission
- Participant
- 9/2021
- Estimating earthquake ground motions: Background, methods and challenges
- Speaker
- 12/7/2021
- Structural Safety (Journal)
- Peer reviewer
- 7/2021
- Marsden Fund Council (External organisation)
- Advisor
- 7/2021
- Creator and leader of online group project “Designing a resilient town”
- Recipient
- 7/6/2021
More professional activities
Projects
- Investigating approaches to encourage seismic retrofitting in less-developed countries
- Tubaldi, Enrico (Co-investigator) Douglas, John (Principal Investigator)
- Funder: Royal Academy of Engineering
Award: £18,500 - 13-Jan-2020 - 12-Jan-2021
- Cost-benefit analyses to assess the potential of Operational Earthquake Forecasting in Europe
- Douglas, John (Principal Investigator) Azarbakht, Alireza (Co-investigator)
- Funded by EPSRC Vacation Internship
- 25-Jan-2020 - 31-Jan-2020
- Expert Seismic Advice to EDF FEGO 2020
- Douglas, John (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2020 - 31-Jan-2020
- Towards more Earthquake-resilient Urban Societies through a Multi-sensor-based Information System enabling Earthquake Forecasting, Early Warning and Rapid Response Systems (TURNKEY)
- Douglas, John (Principal Investigator) Perry, Marcus (Co-investigator) Roberts, Jen (Co-investigator) Tubaldi, Enrico (Co-investigator) Zonta, Daniele (Co-investigator)
- Towards more Earthquake-resilient Urban Societies through a Multi-sensor-based Information System enabling Earthquake Forecasting, Early Warning and Rapid Response actions
- 01-Jan-2019 - 31-Jan-2022
- Assessment of the limits and potentials of earthquake early warning systems for Europe
- Douglas, John (Principal Investigator)
- Funded by a Carnegie Vacation Scholarship
- 27-Jan-2019 - 02-Jan-2019
- Expert Seismic Advice to EDF FEGO 2019
- Douglas, John (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2019 - 31-Jan-2019
More projects
Address
Civil and Environmental Engineering
James Weir Building
James Weir Building
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