Citation on the award of Life Membership, March 2010
Dr. David Hopkins has played a prominent role in Earthquake Engineering in New Zealand and internationally throughout his career. In particular, he has been actively involved in a wide range of NZSEE activities over an extended period of time.
David was the Society’s President from July 1986 to March 1989, and was a member of the Management Committee for virtually the entire period from 1979 through to 1991. He was the Society’s Representative on the International Association of Earthquake Engineering from 1992 to 2000, and was then a Director of IAAE from 2000 until 2008. He continues as a Director of the World Seismic Safety Initiative, an appointment he has held since 2005. David was also the Deputy Chair of the Organising Committee of the highly successful 12th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering held in Auckland in 2000.
In addition to these roles, David has been at the forefront of learning from earthquakes. He was a member of NZSEE reconnaissance teams following the 1985 Mexico, 1990 Philippines and 2007 Peru earthquakes, the latter two as leader. He was also a member of Lifelines study tours following the 1994 Northridge and 1995 Kobe earthquakes, and led the second phase team following the 2009 Padang, Indonesia earthquake.
David has also been involved for more than 25 years in the Society’s technical work on assessing and improving the structural performance of earthquake risk buildings.
He was also a key player in the establishment of the Earthquake Engineering New Zealand business cluster, and has been a tireless promoter of the cluster, including spending extended periods of time overseas on key projects.
David’s leadership across the wide range of initiatives, activities and events highlighted above has been of the highest quality. The Society is indeed indebted to David for his outstanding and continuing commitment.