The research paper on earthquake written by Prof. Ka-Veng Yuen and his fourth-year student He-Qing Mu from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), University of Macau (UM), has been selected by Nova Science Publishers in USA to be published as a chapter in the book Earthquake Engineering: New Research, reflecting the advancement and international recognition of the University’s research on earthquake engineering.

The research project aims at assessing the influence of earthquake on buildings. Considering that the estimation of peak ground acceleration is one of the main issues in civil and earthquake engineering practice, the paper proposes to use the Bayesian probabilistic model class selection approach to obtain the most suitable prediction model class for the seismic attenuation formula, balancing between the data fitting capability and the sensitivity to noise. This method is not only capable to select suitable mathematic model sets, but can also quantify the uncertainties. This method has already been employed in areas such as air quality prediction, hydraulics, artificial neural networks and structural health monitoring. Prof. Yuen has been working on probabilistic methods and earthquake engineering for 10 years, and his works on the application of the Bayesian approach in civil engineering are internationally influential. This paper is the outcome of Mu’s graduation project supervised and inspired by Prof. Yuen. Mr. Mu said that he will stay in UM for the master’s program after graduation, continuing his research on earthquake studies and delving deeper into the topic of his undergraduate project.

Nova Science Publishers is a globally important publisher of scientific and technical books, famous of its publication of the newest advancement in scientific areas. It publishes more than 500 types of books and 45 types of academic periodicals every year. Besides Prof. Yuen and Mr. Mu’s paper, the book Earthquake Engineering: New Research includes nine other papers written by renowned experts and scholars from institutions such as the Earthquake Research Institute of the University of Tokyo, the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering in Taiwan, Beijing Jiaotong University, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Maryland in the United States.

In addition, in response to the social attention aroused by the Sichuan Earthquake, FST is going to offer two science lectures on this topic in early July so as to strengthen secondary students’ scientific knowledge of this natural phenomenon. Dr. Man-Hoi Lok and Prof. Ka-Veng Yuen from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering will respectively talk on “Earthquake in the Perspective of Geotechnical Engineering” and “Earthquake and Building Structures: Related Research of the University of Macau”. All are welcome to attend the lectures.

Caption: Prof. Ka-Veng Yuen (right) and He-Qing Mu