Vice President and Principal Engineer
Expertise:
Performance Assessment
Hazard Analysis
Engineering Seismology
Decision Analysis
Dr. Youngs has more than 30 years of consulting experience with primary emphasis in hazard assessment. He has pioneered approaches for incorporating earth sciences data, and their associated uncertainties, into probabilistic hazard analyses. The focus of this work has been on developing quantitative evaluations of hazard by combining statistical data and expert judgment. As Manager of the Decision Analysis (DA) operating unit at AMEC Geomatrix, Dr. Youngs has helped develop capabilities within the firm that integrate the fields of earth sciences, hazard analysis, and risk assessment.
Dr. Youngs has done extensive work to develop probabilistic seismic hazard methodologies that incorporate geologic information and explicitly account for the uncertainties in interpreting geologic and seismologic data. His experience in ground motion analysis has included the development of relationships for predicting earthquake ground motions for a variety of tectonic environments through analysis of empirical strong motion data and the use of numerical modeling studies and shaking intensity data to extend/modify empirical attenuation relationships.
Dr. Youngs has conducted seismic ground motion hazard analyses for individual sites of critical facilities in a wide variety of tectonic environments. He has been task leader and project manager for seismic ground motion studies conducted for nuclear power plants in Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Oregon, and, Washington in the US and locations in Bulgaria, Canada, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Switzerland; offshore platforms in California, China, and the North Sea; dams in Oregon, California, the Tennessee Valley, Colombia, Egypt, and Mozambique; Department of Energy facilities in California, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico, and South Carolina; and major highway bridges in California, Oregon, New York, Washington, D.C., and South Carolina. His experience on Corps of Engineers projects includes seismic hazard assessment and development of acceleration time histories for Blue River Dam, Oregon; Olmsted Locks and Dam, Illinois; Haysi Dam, Virginia; Marmet and London Locks and Dams, West Virginia; proposed U.S. Army national missile defense facility sites at Fort Greely, Clear Air Station, and Shemya Island, Alaska; chemical weapons incinerator facilities in Colorado, Oregon and Utah; and military bases of Fort Riley, Kansas, Fort Lewis, Washington, and Fort Richardson, Alaska.
Dr. Youngs has considerable experience in assessing earthquake hazards in California. He has participated in the seismic hazard assessment for several Corps of Engineers dams in Southern California, seismic hazard assessments for the San Onofre nuclear power plant, a system-wide assessment of seismic hazard for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water Department, and assessments for the Bay Area Rapid Transit System and its proposed extensions. Dr. Youngs is also a member of the development team for the PEER Next Generation Attenuation.
Education:
- Ph.D. Geotechnical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1982
- M.S. Geotechnical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1973
- B.S. Civil Engineering, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 1969
Registration:
- Geotechnical Engineer, CA, GE924, 1987
- Civil Engineer, CA, C22519, 1973
Affiliations:
Society for Risk Assessment
American Statistical Association
American Society of Civil Engineers
American Geophysical Union
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
Seismological Society of America