Research Highlight - Sherif Eltawil
What would you do in an imminent collapse situation?
Visualizing planned construction operations in an immersive interactive world improves coordination, safety, and communication during construction.
How do building occupants respond to signals issued by a building during and immediately after a compromising event that threatens its integrity? How does the building itself respond and how does that response influence occupant survival rates?
Prof. El-Tawil and his group are addressing these questions in collaboration with a team of Social Scientists at the U. of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center. The work will be conducted by embedding numerical models that represent human response in emergency situations within computational models of collapsing buildings.
The team hopes to uncover how signals issued by a distressed building are interpreted and acted upon by building occupants. The research will also shed light on how buildings collapse and will identify means by which to mitigate building failure and its effects. The knowledge gained in this project is expected help shape public education and awareness programs to help building occupants, their rescuers and city officials respond appropriately during extreme events.