Engineers from 25 universities, agencies and private firms will meetFeb. 4-5 in Sacramento to discuss more economical and reliable ways to ensure that buildings, bridges, docks, dams, pipelines and other structures can withstand potentially devastating earthquakes. Organized by Kandiah Arulanandan, a professor of civil engineering at UC Davis, and Ronald F. Scott, a professor of civil engineering at the California Institute of Technology, the meeting will focus on how to improve the practice of assessing and mitigating infrastructure damage caused by strong ground movements during earthquakes. "There are two different things -- state of the art and state of the practice," Arulanandan says, referring to a gap he sees between professional practice and university teaching and research. The workshop, titled "Geotechnical Research Needs for the Assessment and Mitigation of Infrastructure Deterioration in Response to Earthquake Hazards," is part of a preliminary inquiry by the National Science Foundation into the country's civil infrastructure and also part of the coordinated multi-agency national earthquake hazard reduction program. Deliberations from this meeting of geotechnical researchers will be considered at a broader April workshop set up by a new NSF task force on civil infrastructure systems. The February meeting will be held at the Delta King in Sacramento.