The EERI Board of Directors selected the paper “Landmark Data Set from the Building Nonstructural Components and Systems (BNCS) Project” (Earthquake Spectra, 32(2), 1239-1259) by E. Pantoli, M. Chen, T.C. Hutchinson, R. Astroza, J.P. Conte, H. Ebrahimian, J.I. Restrepo, and X. Wang, as the Outstanding Earthquake Spectra Paper of 2016.

The Earthquake Spectra Editorial Board included the following statement in their recommendation. “Rarely do we see full scale testing, to the point of collapse, of structural systems including nonstructural elements. This paper sequence describes this undertaking from the design of the experiments through to the presentation and analysis of the data. The test sequence was essentially repeated twice, once with and again without seismic isolators. The authors present the data on structural response and performance, as well as the response of the non-structural components, which are linked do the structural responses. The authors describe this as a landmark data set, and I expect they are correct about this. The impact of the work is already evident from strong citations, which are among the top for this year in the journal.”