Rob Shepherd

Rob Shepherd has had more than forty years experience in analyzing the dynamic response of structures, specializing in the behavior of buildings and bridges in earthquakes.

He has undertaken detailed field investigations of damage to constructed facilities sustained in the 1969 Inangahua (New Zealand), the 1971 San Fernando, the 1985 (Michocan) Mexico City, the 1987 Whittier Narrows, the 1989 Loma Prieta and the 1994 Northridge events.

He has been responsible for numerous earthquake damage reports including those published in technical journals and unpublished ones commissioned by individual property owners, by insurance companies and by attorneys engaged in post-earthquake litigation.

Dr. Shepherd has taught courses in seismic structural response and in earthquake resistant design at the California Institute of Technology, Cambridge University (U.K.), University of California (Irvine) and Auckland and Canterbury Universities (New Zealand). He has an extensive record of published research in the earthquake response of buildings and bridges, including the results of his supervising graduate students working for their masters and doctors degrees.

He has served on the New Zealand seismic loading code committee and as the official representative of the California Universities to the Seismological Committee of the Structural Engineers' Association of California. He has been a member of the SEAOC committee on Seismic Base Isolation and a member (chairman 1994-5) of the SEAOSC ad hoc Committee on Experimental Testing Procedures to simulate earthquake loading. Other technical activities include current membership of the ATC-33 Task Force charged with the production of standards for the seismic retrofit of timber buildings and being one of the six person SAC Joint Venture Management Committee overseeing the $M11 focused investigation into the problems of welded moment resistant steel frame buildings following the weaknesses exposed in the Northridge earthquake.

In the last fifteen years he has worked on more than two hundred cases in the western states including Stamper v. Lawrence Drive Partners, L.A. Superior Court, July 1989, personal injury construction accident, award $3.4 million and Villa Marina East V H.O.A. v. Watt Industries, condominium construction defects, pre trial settlement, August 1991, $13.3 million.

Dr. Shepherd has established the Earthquake Damage Analysis Corporation with the intention of facilitating the provision of expert specialized services in earthquake damage analysis and mitigation.