Alan Davenport

Dr. A. G. Davenport received his schooling in South Africa, and both his B.A. and M.A. in Mechanical Sciences from Cambridge University, England, in 1954 and 1958 respectively. In 1957 he received his M.A.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the University of Toronto before returning to England to get his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Bristol in 1961.

Appointed to the Engineering Faculty of The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario in 1961, Dr. Davenport is now Professor Emeritus and a former Chairman of the Civil Engineering Group. He was the founder of the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory and has been the Director since its establishment in 1965. This laboratory received early recognition and prominence for its research in wind engineering. As well as contributing to the scientific understanding, it has carried out innovative design studies for major structures, many of the tallest buildings and largest bridges in the world have been studied at Western. The laboratory has also been active in wind/wave studies and atmospheric dispersion.

In his research interests Dr. Davenport has pioneered in the application of boundary layer wind tunnels to the design of wind sensitive structures, the description of urban wind climates and other problems involving the action of wind. He also has contributed to the fields of meteorology, environmental loads, structural dynamics and earthquake loading. He developed the world's first statistically based seismic zoning map, for Canada. He has authored over 200 papers on these various subjects and has lectured extensively around the world.

Dr. Davenport has acted as engineering consultant on many major structures, including the world's tallest and longest; the World Trade Center in New York City, the Sears Building in Chicago, the CN Tower in Toronto, the recently proposed new 3,300 m span Messina Straits Crossing in Italy, Normandy bridge in France, the Storebaelt bridge in Denmark and the Tsing Ma bridge in Hong Kong. His consulting activities have extended to major buildings, towers, buildings, offshore structures and pipelines throughout the world. He has also contributed internationally to design standards.

In serving on a wide variety of professional and government committees, Dr. Davenport has been chairman of the American Society of Civil Engineers Task Force on Wind Forces, a member of the Canadian Aeronautical Research Advisory Committee, The Canadian National Committee on Earthquake Engineering, the Committee on the National Building Code of Canada, the Board on Natural Disasters of the National Academy of Engineering in the United States, and the International Standards Organization. Following the United Nations resolution in November 1987 declaring 1990-2000 as the International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction. Dr. Davenport became a member of an adhoc Advisory Committee, chaired by Dr. Press, NAE, to assist in the planning. In Oct. 1993 he was appointed Chairman for the newly formed Canadian National Committee for the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction under the auspices of the Royal Society of Canada and The Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is a member of the Canadian Construction Research Board (NRC) and on the board of Directors of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering and the International Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. In January 1988, Dr. Davenport was appointed to the Scientific Committee of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society for a 3 year term, ending June 30, 1991. Dr. Davenport became a founding member in 1989 of the Centre for Studies in Construction at UWO. He has served as its first and current Director. In May 1999 a partnership with the University of Western Ontario and the Insurance Bureau of Canada announced the establishment of Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, a world-leading research centre dedicated to reducing the impact of natural disasters. Dr. Davenport will serve as the Institute's Research Director.

In learned journals, Dr. Davenport was the founding editor of the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering and has been on the editorial board of six others.

Dr. Davenport is a member of numerous Canadian and International Societies and Associations - including the Royal Meteorological Society, the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, the Engineering Institute of Canada, the International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineering, and the International Association of Shell Structures, the Seismological Society of North America.

He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1972. In March 1987 he became a Foreign Associate in the National Academy of Engineering. In November 1987, Dr. Davenport was elected a Foreign Member of the Fellowship of Engineering in England. Also in 1987 he became a founding member of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. In 1991 he became Vice-President of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and on June 2, 1992 he was elected President for a one year term.

In addition to receiving the Alfred Noble Prize from the six founding engineering societies in the U.S.A. in 1963, Dr. Davenport also received the Gzowski Medal from the Engineering Institute of Canada in the same year and again in 1978; in 1960 he had also received the Duggan Medal and Prize from the Institute. In 1965 he received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement and two years later the Canadian Meteorological Society's prize in Applied Meteorology. From the American Society of Civil Engineers he has received in 1973, the ASCE State-of-the-Art Award for a review on Structural Safety and in 1977 the "Can-AM Amity Award". He was awarded the Silver Medal by the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario in 1978. Engineering News Record cited Dr. Davenport for service to the construction industry in 1981. The Canadian Society for Civil Engineering recognized Dr. Davenport as a Fellow in 1982 and presented him with the A. B. Sanderson Award for Structural Engineering in 1985. He received the CANCAM Medal in 1983 and is a Fellow of the Centre for Frontier Engineering Research, Edmonton, Alberta. In January 1988, Dr. Davenport was awarded the Gold Medal by the Institution of Structural Engineers (UK). In April of 1988, he was nominated and presented the Rutherford Lecture sponsored by the Royal Society of London and Royal Society of Canada. He was awarded the Earnest Manning Innovation Award of Distinction $25,000 in 1990. On May 11th, 1992, Dr. Davenport was awarded the Bell Canada-Forum Award for excellence in university-industry collaborative research. Dr. Davenport was awarded the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Prize $50,000, Canada's most distinguished annual award given in recognition of world-class achievement on April 14, 1993. He was also awarded the Julian C. Smith Medal of the Engineering Institute of Canada on June 5, 1993. Dr. Davenport was also awarded the 1994 Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering by NSERC on January 13th, 1994. On November 16th, 1995 he received the Ruban D'Or Award from the French Department of Transportation for his work on the Pont de Normandie bridge. Dr. Davenport has also been awarded the International Award of Merit in Structural Engineering which consists of a diploma and a medal, from the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering which was presented on June 16, 1996 in Copenhagen. On March 26, 1997, Dr. Davenport was awarded the Hellmuth Prize, which recognizes substantial Research Achievement at The University of Western Ontario. He is the one of the first recipients of this prize. On May 29, 1997 he was awarded the Engineering Prize for Achievement in Research from the Faculty of Engineering Science at UWO. Dr. Davenport has most recently been awarded the Sir John Kennedy Medal from the Engineering Institute of Canada in recognition of outstanding service to the profession and for noteworthy contributions to the science of engineering. He was presented this medal on March 2, 2001. Dr. Davenport will also receive the Prix Albert Caquot Award from the L'Association Francais de Genie Civil in Paris, France on December 10, 2001.

Dr. Davenport has also been was awarded Honorary degrees from the following academic institutions: the University of Louvain, Belgium in 1979; the Technical University of Denmark in 1983; McGill University in 1984; University of Waterloo in 1986; the University of Toronto in 1989; the University of La Plata in Argentina on April 22, 1993; the University of Guelph on June 3rd, 1993; Carleton University on June 14th, 1996; the University of Bristol, United Kingdom on July 7, 1998 and the University of Western Ontario, June 5, 2001.