Thomas D. O'Rourke

Thomas Denis O'Rourke ( born 1948 ) is an American civil engineer, who deals with geotechnical engineering and professor at Cornell University is.

O'Rourke studied civil engineering at Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in 1970 and at the University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign with a master's degree in 1973 and his doctorate in 1975.

It deals with the impact of natural disasters and other threats on extensive infrastructure construction ( and developed for geographic information systems ), earthquake safe construction and pipelines and tunnels. He advised, for example, in the large water tunnel projects and several subway projects in New York City and for water supply and transportation in San Francisco. He also designed for high pressure pipelines and analyzed their seismic safety.

He received the Ralph B. Peck Award, the Stephen D. Bechtle Award in pipeline engineering and was 2009 Rankine Lecturer ( Geohazards and large geographically distributed systems). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( 2000) and the National Academy of Engineering ( 1993).

2003/ 04 he was director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. He examined earthquake consequences worldwide ( for example in the Christchurch earthquake 2011 earthquake in Kobe in 1995, earthquake in Spitak 1988 ( Armenia ) earthquake of Gölcük 1999) and was on the committee of the National Academy of Engineering, the consequences of Hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans examined. He examined for the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems exposure to the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the infrastructure in New York - his committee came to the conclusion that the attacks on infrastructure was remarkably good.