Hosted by adventurer and NBC News special correspondent Ben Fogle, Forecast: Disaster sets out to reconstruct Earth’s most devastating natural forces. Each episode examines the science behind the planet’s most destructive weather forces using experts, advanced engineering technology and science, as well as firsthand accounts of what it feels like to be caught in the midst of nature’s fury.
According to National Geographic, earthquakes affect millions of people all over the world. Accurate prediction is impossible so people are always caught unawares by their destructive power. In this show, UK adventurer Ben Fogle and Georgia Tech expert DesRoches take three recent quakes, in Haiti, Italy and Japan and show how they affected the residents.
According to the program overview, "Survivor stories reveal the true horror of being buried under 5 stories of collapsed concrete, the shock of a quake in an Italian village that has been untouched for 300 years, and the deadly tsunami triggered by the 2011 quake off the Japanese coast. A full-scale house is specially built to discover what happens when it's subjected to the kind of shaking you get in a real quake. From the first tremors that set glasses vibrating on to the floor, to the giant lurches that strain the wooden frame, we watch every stage as the Quake House' gradually submits and crumples to the ground."
DesRoches earned his Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. His primary research interests are design of buildings and critical infrastructure subjected to extreme loads, seismic risk assessment of transportation systems, and application of smart materials in seismic-resistant design and retrofit. He has a particular interest in mitigating the impacts of earthquakes in the Caribbean and Central America. He has published more than 200 articles in the general area of earthquake engineering and seismic risk assessment and has given more than 100 presentations in 30 countries.
He is currently the director of the Caribbean Hazards Assessment, Mitigation and Preparedness (CHAMP) Project, which is focused on managing the risks from natural hazards in the Caribbean. DesRoches has served as chair of the ASCE Seismic Effects Committee (2006-2010), chair of the executive committee of the Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (2010), and is a past board member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). He is currently a member of the executive committee of the National Academy of Sciences Disasters Roundtable, and is on the advisory board for the Natural Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure and Emergency Management Research Center (DIEM).
