When earthquakes shake buildings to the ground anywhere in the world, Dr. Lisa Tobber can’t look away. As a structural engineering researcher at UBC Okanagan who specializes in disaster resiliency, Dr. Tobber instead leans into the chaos.

There is too much to learn, she says, and there is much to do to prevent the next tragedy—and they can be prevented.

“We all know natural disasters are inevitable. But we can design buildings to survive—not collapse—so they’ll be more resilient and functional shortly after disasters,” says Dr. Tobber, UBCO’s Principal Research Chair in Women in Engineering and the BC Housing Professor in Resilient Reinforced Concrete Buildings.

She adds: “We currently design for what’s called life safety, meaning the building will keep standing and people will be able to leave. But the issue then becomes, ‘Will those people be able to get back in?’ As soon as the building is damaged or condemned, people can no longer return to their homes.”

Examining buildings and how they’re built is what she does every day at UBCO. Specifically, Dr. Tobber develops innovative structural systems for mid- and high-rise buildings that produce low-damage responses following natural disasters such as earthquakes.

“We want to know how to design more resiliency for these disasters, and then take those lessons, implement them globally and share that knowledge with the world,” she says.

At UBCO—alongside 10 post-graduate students in the Advanced Structural Simulation and Experimental Testing group—Dr. Tobber bends steel and crushes concrete in the university’s high-head lab—a three-storey test facility with a crane and reinforced concrete floor section. Stepping inside, you might see what looks like a bridge girder or high-rise truss attached to machines capable of great violence. But they’re not Hollywood props from a superhero movie.

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