Kit Miyamoto

Dr. Hideki "Kit" Miyamoto (born 1963) is a Japanese American structural engineer known for being the founder-CEO of Miyamoto International, a global structural engineering and disaster risk reduction organization. He is also the chairman of California's Alfred E. Alquist Seismic Safety Commission, which investigates earthquakes and recommends policies for risk reduction.

Early life and education
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.

Career
Miyamoto started his career in structural engineering and later focused on disaster resiliency, response, and reconstruction. 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, 2010 Haiti earthquake, 2011 Japan earthquake, 2015 Nepal earthquake, 2020 Puerto Rico earthquakes and other seismic risk reduction programs along with disaster risk mitigation policy work. 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.

Innovations
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. This was the first time this retrofit had been achieved in the United States.

Publications

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

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