Speakers

Speaker bios

Donald G. Anderson, Ph.D., P.E., G.E., BC.GE, M.ASCE (Life Member)

Dr. Anderson is a principal geotechnical engineer at the Jacobs Engineering Group. He has nearly 50 years of experience as a geotechnical engineering consultant, providing specialized expertise in the areas of geotechnical earthquake engineering and soil dynamics, soil mechanics, and foundation engineering. He has worked on the design and construction of port facilities throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. His work has included design of driven and drilled pile foundations, breakwater and wharf embankment stability analyses, dredging studies, pile installation monitoring, pile-load testing, ground instrumentation, and ground improvement involving ground densification and deep soil mixing methods. Dr. Anderson’s work on port projects has focused on seismic design and performance, where he has been involved in seismic site response and ground motion determinations, liquefaction triggering and seismic settlement evaluations, embankment stability assessments, and soil-pile-wharf interaction studies. Dr. Anderson has been active in the development of seismic design codes for AASHTO, NEHRP, IBC, and ASCE 7. He co-authored NCHRP Report 611, Seismic Analysis and Design of Retaining Walls, Buried Structures, Slopes, and Embankments. He participated in and served as a reviewer during development of seismic design guidelines for the Port of Alaska, Port of Los Angles, and the Port of Long Beach.  

Arul K. Arulmoli, Ph.D., P.E., G.E. BC.GE, F.ASCE (Life Member)

Arul is a Principal at Earth Mechanics, Inc. He has more than 40 years of experience, with a broad-based technical expertise in design, analysis, and construction of foundations for ports, harbors, dry docks, and marine structures; earthquake engineering; soil-structure interaction; and field and laboratory testing. He was a key member of the committee that organized and conducted a two-day workshop on seismic design of container wharves in 2005, sponsored by the Port of Los Angeles and the ASCE COPRI, to better inform the marine engineering industry professionals of the more current and cost-effective seismic design approaches for container wharves. He served as the chairman of the geotechnical task committee of the committee that developed the  ASCE/COPRI 61-14 Standard, Seismic Design of Piers and Wharves. He is presently serving on the committee that is updating ASCE/COPRI 61. He was a member of the California Seismic Safety Commission from 2005-2009. He taught graduate-level earthquake engineering classes at the University of California, Irvine and the California State University at Long Beach. He has published over 60 technical papers in the areas of geotechnical earthquake engineering and foundations for various waterfront projects.

Omar A. Jaradat, Ph.D, PE, BC.PE, M.ASCE

Omar is a Vice President and Structures Director with Moffatt & Nichol. He has 28 years of engineering and management experience. His responsibility includes program oversight, project management, and integrated design for marine infrastructure that promotes optimization, resiliency, sustainability, code, and technology advancement. His experience includes consulting on more than 150 marine terminal projects with international and national private firms and public organizations. He is an expert in the field of performance-based design of structures in terms of design, analysis, and engineering of infrastructure systems such as ports and harbor structures, bridges, and retaining structures. He has led the development and upgrade of port-wide design criteria for the port operations and complexes at Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. He is an ASCE/COPRI Board Certified Port Engineer and the Chair of ASCE/COPRI Design Standards for Piers and Wharves Committee, Chair of ASCEC/COPRI Port Certification Program Committee, member of the ASCE/COPRI 61 Standards Committee on Seismic Design of Piers & Wharves; and member of PIANC MarCom Working Group 225 Seismic Design Guidelines for Port Structures, USA Principal Representative. Dr. Jaradat is the Chair of Industry Advisory Board for UCSD research joint research program between NIST/NSF/NAVFAC/ASCE COPRI and POLA/POLB. In addition, he is a Board of Advisory Member for NHERI at UCSD Shake Table Facility, national shared-use large outdoor shake table facility. He has also published and co-authored over 60 papers in the field of earthquake engineering, marine structures, and the elastic behavior of structures.

Richard C. Wittkop, P.E.

Dick Wittkop has more than 40 years of experience in the planning, design, and construction of major projects involving ports and harbors terminal development. He offers expertise in port system operations and risk and decision analysis. Before joining Moffatt & Nichol, Mr. Wittkop served as a member of the Port of Los Angeles Structure Design Group, providing oversight and design review for public port projects valued more than $250 million USD. These projects included a cruise ship terminal, automobile import terminal, and four cargo terminals. Project experience includes the implementation of the Port of Long Beach Mega-Terminal Program, a decade-long program that included the expansion and upgrade of existing facilities and the construction of new facilities to create six, 300-plus-acre container terminals, with a construction cost of about $2 billion USD. For the Port of Los Angeles Seismic Workshop in California, Dick organized and conducted a seismic workshop focused on earthquake engineering issues related to implementing the 2020 Program. More than 80 earthquake-engineering experts from around the world attended the workshop and presented 30 technical papers related to the port’s seismic design requirements. He edited and published the proceedings for the workshop that included seismic design guidelines and an outline of a Seismic Safety Plan for the port.