Dr. Kenneth Campbell, Vice President

Dr. Kenneth Campbell is Vice President of EQECAT, Inc. Dr. Campbell is responsible for developing seismic hazard models and seismic input for EQECAT's global risk-assessment software, portfolio loss studies, and securitization risk analyses for the insurance and financial industries. As a leading expert in strong ground motion estimation and seismic hazard assessment, he also provides in-house consulting to ABS Consulting Inc., ABS Group's engineering risk division.

Dr. Campbell has more than 39 years of professional experience in technical management, engineering, consulting, and research in the areas of engineering seismology, strong ground motion, seismic hazard evaluation, and geotechnical earthquake engineering. Seven of these years were spent as a Project Engineer with the USGS National Hazards Mapping Program.

Dr. Campbell has provided expert testimony at numerous nuclear and insurance hearings and has served on expert ground-motion panels for high-level DOE and nuclear industry probabilistic seismic hazard projects. He was on the Board of the Seismological Society of America, served as Vice Chairman of the ASCE Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Seismic Risk Committee, and was an invited member of the Earth Science Advisory Board for the DOE Savannah River Plant. He has served on the editorial boards of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America and the journal Earthquake Spectra. He has authored over 135 publications, many of which have been published in international books and journals. Dr. Campbell is internationally recognized for his development of ground-motion attenuation relationships.

He received a Ph.D. in Geotechnical Engineering from UCLA in 1977.

Dr. Campbell is based in Oregon.

Articles and Publications

September 2012
15^th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering
A Consistent Cross-Border Seismic Hazard Model for Loss Estimation and Risk Management in Canada
(PDF 604 KB)
The white paper was published in the proceedings of the 15th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering held in Lisbon, Portugal in September of 2012.

A case study in the transformation of national seismic hazard models intended for building code applications in Canada and the US. Paul C. Thenhaus, Dr. Ken W. Campbell, Nitin Gupta, David F. Smith, and Dr. Mahmoud M. Khater authored the white paper.

August 2012
European Seismological Commission 33^rd General Assembly
A Consistent Cross-Border Seismic Hazard Model for Loss Estimation and Risk Management in Canada
(PDF 65 KB)
Case Study from the European Seismological Commission 33^rd General Assembly in Moscow, Russia

A case study in the transformation of national seismic hazard models intended for building code applications in Canada and the US. Paul C. Thenhaus, Dr. Ken W. Campbell, Nitin Gupta, David F. Smith, and Dr. Mahmoud M. Khater authored the white paper.

February 2012
EQECAT
Spatial and Temporal Earthquake Clustering: Part 2 - Earthquake Aftershocks
(PDF 534 KB)
Part 2 of a 3-part series of white papers on earthquake clustering.

The paper discusses aftershock properties and models, as well as ambiguities in identifying foreshock-mainshock-aftershock sequences.

October 2011
EQECAT
Spatial and Temporal Earthquake Clustering: Part 1 - Global Earthquakes
(PDF 2 MB)
Part 1 of a 3-part series of white papers on earthquake clustering.

Apparent global clustering of damaging earthquakes is raising concerns that our planet might experience even more catastrophic tremblors in the near future. EQECAT experts have been studying these events and published their insights and perspectives.

February 2010
Earthquake Spectra
Deterministic and Probabilistic Predictions of Yield Strength and Inelastic Displacement Spectra
Dr. Kenneth Campbell co-authored this publication in the recent issue of the journal Earthquake Spectra. This paper presents deterministic and probabilistic predictions of inelastic response spectra based on a comprehensive ground motion prediction equation

February 2010
Earthquake Spectra
Ground Motion Prediction Equation ("Attenuation Relationship") for Inelastic Response Spectra
Dr. Kenneth Campbell co-authored this publication in the recent issue of the journal Earthquake Spectra. This paper presents the process and fundamental results of a comprehensive ground motion prediction equation (GMPE, or "attenuation" relationship) developed for inelastic response spectra.

December 2009
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
A Guide to Differences between Stochastic Point-Source and Stochastic Finite-Fault Simulations
Dr. Kenneth Campbell co-authored this paper for the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. This article was motivated by a question asked by Ken to the rest of the co-authors: Why is it that we cannot approximately reproduce the stochastic simulations of Atkinson and Boore (2006), one of the ground motion models used in the 2008 US national seismic hazard maps as well as in USQuake, for eastern North America, which were made with the finite-fault stochastic model EXSIM, by using the point-source stochastic model SMSIM, with the same model parameters? This and other questions are answered in this paper.

November 2009
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
Understanding of Earthquake Risk Improving Dramatically in US
The understanding of California earthquake risk by the scientific community, catastrophe modelers and the property and casualty insurance industry has improved dramatically since 2002, especially regarding earthquake probabilities and ground motion. Dr. Kenneth Campbell and Bill Keogh discuss the major advances in quake probabilities and the EQECAT process to implement the latest available science into its US Quake model.

November 2007
Bermuda Re/Insurance
US Earthquake Risk
(PDF 876 KB)
Dr. Kenneth Campbell and Dr. Mahmoud Khater discuss seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest and Central US regions in the second of a series of articles concerning United States earthquake risk.