Dr. Giovanna Biscontin, associate professor of geotechnical engineering in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, traveled to L’Aquila, Italy, in early April to help assess the damage caused by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake that struck the area in the early morning on April 6.

Italy, which sits sandwiched between the European and African tectonic plates, is a generally high seismic area.

“What happens is, basically that area is being pitched,” Biscontin explained. “They can’t even tell what kind of faults [are there] because there are so many forces acting on the same geological setting that it becomes extremely difficult to separate their effects on the geology.”

The Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER), which is funded by the National Science Foundation, recruited Biscontin to assist in the reconnaissance.

“They are organized to respond quickly to any of these extreme events that have potentially geotechnical engineering consequences,” Biscontin said.

Biscontin spent six days in Italy gathering data with the GEER team.

“I was looking at the effects of the earthquake in the urban areas,” she said. “We were trying to look for evidence of any surface expression of the fault or damage patterns near the fault.”

Biscontin and a graduate student from Montana Tech classified damage and how the different soils responded to the earthquake along and away from the fault line.

“We were trying to see if we could see any difference in the pattern of damage,” Biscontin explained.

The data gathered by Biscontin and the GEER team will aid in the ongoing investigation of the earthquake damage. Once all of the data is gathered and analyzed, Biscontin said she hopes that “it will help us better understand the effects of earthquakes and that other researchers will be able to use the information as a tool to validate their models and theories.”

This was Biscontin’s first time to help with earthquake reconnaissance.

“I typically don’t like doing earthquake reconnaissance because I don’t like to go into these places and look at the damage,” said Biscontin, a native Italian. “[But] this was very special because it was in Italy and I felt [a] connection.”

Written by Cassidy Thomas

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