Kit Miyamoto

Miyamoto was born and raised in Tokyo and studied earthquake engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and California State University. He lives in Los Angeles.[8]

Miyamoto started his career in structural engineering[2] and later focused on disaster resiliency, response, and reconstruction.[9] He provides policy consultation to the World Bank, USAID, UN agencies, governments and private sector. He has led teams of professionals on response and reconstruction projects after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake,[1] 2010 Haiti earthquake,[10][11] 2011 Japan earthquake, 2015 Nepal earthquake,[12] 2020 Puerto Rico earthquakes[13] and other seismic risk reduction programs along with disaster risk mitigation policy work.[14]

Miyamoto was elected as a chair of the California Seismic Safety Commission in October 2020. He has formerly served as a seismic safety commissioner for eight years where he has advocated for increased resiliency in California.[15]

Dr. Miyamoto was responsible for the seismic retrofit of the Theme Building, an iconic Space Age structure at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The innovative retrofit consisted of adding a tuned mass damper (TMD) to the top of the building’s core. The TMD option was selected because it was less expensive, protected the building’s architectural features, and minimized building closure.[16] This was the first time this retrofit had been achieved in the United States.[17]

Dr. Kit Miyamoto provides aid in major earthquake emergencies.

• Haiti earthquake 2021: Findings from the repair and damage assessment of 179,800 buildings, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (2024)[23]
• Seismic Risk Assessment and Retrofit of School Buildings In Developing Countries, 11th U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Los Angeles, California (2018)[24]
• Seismic Collapse Probability of Structures with Viscous Dampers per ASCE 7–16: Effect of Large Earthquake, 11th U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Los Angeles, California (2018)[25]
• Damage Assessment and Seismic Retrofit of Heritage and Modern Buildings in the Aftermath of 2015 Nepal Earthquake, 11th U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Los Angeles, California (2018)[26]
• Design of Structures with Dampers per ASCE 7–16 and Performance for Large Earthquakes, Structures Congress, Houston, Texas (2018)[27]
• Cost-Effective Seismic Isolation Retrofit of Heritage Cathedrals in Haiti, 16th World Conference on Earthquake, Santiago, Chile (2017)[28]
• Transparent Global Earthquake Risk And Loss Estimation, Tokyo, Japan (2013)[29]

Major media such as CNN,[30] LA Times,[31] NY Times[32] and Rolling Stone[33] have mentioned, represented, or interviewed him. He was also featured in the “Designing for Disaster” exhibit at the National Building Museum.[34]