CE News, September 2013 - There are several methods for mitigating the effects of seismic activity on infrastructure, including the use of expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam as a seismic buffer for buried structures and rigid retaining walls. Six years ago, Canadian engineers Richard Bathurst, Saman Zarnani, and Andrew Gaskin showed with shaking table testing and numerical modeling that geofoam could reduce the seismic forces on rigid retaining walls (Bathhurst, et al., 2007). The lightweight EPS blocks used with highway embankments, green roofs, and landscape fill are growing in popularity for seismic and other buried applications.