Ziggy Lubkowski

Area of Research / Academic Interests

Ziggy Lubkowski graduated from Kingston Polytechnic, UK in 1987 with a first class honours degree in Civil Engineering. He began his career with Building Design Partnership on the design of the Channel Tunnel project. In 1990 he accepted a research post with the University of Bristol and the international design consultancy Arup working on the verification of non-linear time history analysis for the analysis of dynamic soil structure interaction. At Arup he has worked in both the Geotechnics and Advanced Technology and Research divisions over the past 26 years, specializing in geotechnical earthquake engineering and soil dynamics. Ziggy gained his chartered membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1995 and an MSc for his research work from the University of Bristol in 1996.

Ziggy is now an Associate Director and is the Seismic Skills Leader for Arup in UK, Middle East and Africa. He has carried out geotechnical and seismic design, analysis and assessment for a range of structures in the energy, infrastructure, manufacturing and humanitarian sectors. He has acted as the seismic specialist for major projects such as offshore platforms in the Caspian Sea, New Zealand, the Philippines and Russia, major bridges and tunnels in Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Eastern North America, and numerous seismic hazard studies around the world.

Ziggy has contributed to several seismic research and development projects and has published numerous papers relating to this work. He has also participated in post-earthquake field missions to the 1994 Northridge earthquake in the USA, 1999 Kocaeli earthquake in Turkey, the 2004 Boxing day tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia and the 2010 Maule earthquake in Chile.  He is a co-author of the EEFIT field guide for the survey of earthquake damaged non-engineered structures and the IStructE Guide for Eurocode 8. He is currently the panel Chair for the EPICentre group at University College London, which aims to provide guidance in order to reduce future earthquake losses.

Ziggy has been Chair of the UK society for earthquakes (SECED) and the field investigation team (EEFIT). He is currently an executive member of the European Association of Earthquake Engineering (EAEA) and a member of the BS 525/8 committee on Eurocode 8.  He has been invited to give lectures on earthquake related subjects including Eurocode 8, dynamic soil structure interaction, seismic design of tall buildings, seismic risk assessment, disaster risk reduction and the effects of tsunami.  In 2009 he won the Shamsher Prakash prize for excellence in practice of geotechnical earthquake engineering.