Minutes of the 7 May 2009 meeting of the ANSS Pacific Northwest Advisory Committee
Meeting
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Minutes prepared by Andrew Delorey
Bill Steele called the meeting to order at 10:15am pst, greeted the crowd and had members introduce
themselves
John Vidale reviewed the timing of Regional Advisory Committee (RAC) meetings, and the once-a-year spring
meeting was considered amenable.
Vicki McConnell suggested it might be prudent to have additional meetings on a tighter schedule for matters of
the stimulus and siting.
John Vidale reviewed the 'Big Picture'
1. The PNSN has evolved to a current state of obsession with upgrading software and hardware, and
is likely to reside there for a year or two.
2. The State has cut its portion of the PNSN budget by 9%, like many of UW's budgets.
3. The Federal, NOAA, and Hanford budgets are stable for now.
4. The PNSN is likely to benefit from ARRA funds in four ways, detailed below.
5. Art Frankel is scheduled to arrive in Seattle in September.
6. ESS is shifting to the College of the Environment, minimal impact expected.
7. New Molecular Engineering Building planned next door, minimal impact expected.
Craig Weaver revealed an effort to produce deliberated suites of ShakeMaps for both Washington and Oregon.
The Washington effort has already had several meetings and has been utilized in development of products and exercises
including the CREW Crustal Earthquake Scenario to be in development. The Oregon effort is just being fired up.
CB Crouse endorsed such efforts.
Art Frankel mentioned that he is extending his Seattle modeling to
2 second period shaking in addition to 1 second. Computer modeling for development of a Portland Seismic Hazard Maps
is next.
John Schelling reviewed a wide range of EMD activities and distributed a handout with many
details. He particularly emphasized successful tests of the AHAB sirens, the reformation of the Seismic Safety Committee
(SSC), and the SSC's nascent Resilient State effort, modeled on SF's Resilient City documents.
Eric Holdeman referred to the UK's Resilient Nation as another good template, saying he might post in on his blog
www.disaster-zone.com.
Tim Walsh spoke about the state of DNR Divison
of Geology and Earth Resources (DGER). They will suffer a 58% budget cut starting July 1st, a relief compared to the
67% cut originally
planned. Soft money will mitigate some of the short-term impact. Three geologists and three support staff will be
laid off.
Ray Cakir talked of ANSS site characterizations and HAZUS efforts.
Bill Steele mentioned potential usefulness of various State telemetry resources for carrying PNSN data if the
State Dept of Information Services would allow us access.
Tim Walsh went on to describe the new strong motion station installed on the capitol campus in Olympia in
a
collaborative effort between DGER, the PNSN, and USGS NSMP. Tim has begun trenching across a new fault scarp found
near Price Lake in Mason County.
Vicki McConnel reviewed the state of the Oregon Department of
Geology and Mineral Industries
(DOGAMI). The department
will suffer a 15-20% budget cut resulting in the closing of most field offices. DOGAMI participated in geologic
mapping of the area above the Maupin swarm but found no surface evidence of faulting. She bemoaned lack of tractable
paleo-trench sites in Oregon but DOGAMI keeps hunting for candidates. LIDAR mapping is major new thrust in support of
numerous research efforts and the new data may help identify subtle surface deformation from faulting. DOGAMI
participated in the April 24th Cascade Peril (recovery not response) drill and the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory
Commission (OSSPAC) is being reinvigorated. Vidale and Bodin again said they were eager to meet with various
Oregon agencies and commissions working to mange earthquake risk. Vicki will suggest OSSPAC invite the PNSN to present
at a future meeting.
Joan Gomberg asked whether we should make communications more structured in the case of potentially foreboding
events. This arose because CEPEC (California Earthquake Prediction Advisory Council) members expressed concern that
events in PNSN's purview (Washington and Oregon) may warrant California action. Joan suggested we might wish to
develop a plan for communications with the wider seismological community and then regional stakeholders (EMD, DOGAMI
etc.) when predictions or events that may have an impact on seismic hazard occur, ideally before discussing hypotheses
with the media. Joan may circulate a questionnaire to poll whether action is desirable.
Paul Bodin provided a detailed update of PNSN activities and accomplishments of the past year. He discussed
the design and building of the new discriminator rack, seismic stations and improved IT infrastructure. Swarms under
Maupin and Hanford are on going and the PNSN portable broadband array helped constrain the source area of the Maupin
quakes.
Andrew Delorey has developed a new Seattle basin structure model and has been making measurements of the
viaduct shaking. January 30 Md 4.5 Kingston earthquake processing hiccup the failure of an alerting script on a slow
news day, brought a media spotlight on our failure to generate alert pages and emails immediately following the quake.
(John Schelling kindly expressed admiration at our performance despite hiccup). Other topics Paul addressed included
the PNSN approach to the development of aftershock forecasting, ETS (episodic tremor and slip) redux, PNSN
resilience, and the new CHEETAH earthquake processing software and hardware.
ShakeCast was discussed as a potentially powerful tool, and one that can be souped up with judicious additions
of
NetQuakes instruments. $4K each, bolt down, plug (Ethernet or wifi) and play (although so far network connections
have not been trivial). 2 instruments here at PNSN, 20 sensors en route, 20 more probably scheduled for next year.
The RAC Siting Subcommittee now has work cut out for it, will meet soon chaired by Bill Perkins and
Susan
Chang. John Vidale and Paul Bodin presented the dilemma attending NetQuakes rollout at this early
stage
(try out all promising uses
to build enthusiasm for practical deployment strategies vs. keep instruments close in with limited range of
installations to ease initial debugging). Big issues are downstream cost and reliability, which we will not know
until we gain some experience. Additional units might be bought and perhaps maintained by large organizations that
might want a greater fleet of sensors than we can pay for with ANSS funding. Netquakes/ShakeCast should be a powerful
combination.
John Vidale discussed use of stimulus funding in the PNW in the last 20 minutes. Preliminary stage of planning
precludes delineation of finer details here. Nationally, USGS has allocated $30M to seismic network improvement, $5M
to geodetic improvement for earthquake monitoring. Projects cannot result in additional long term maintenance and
operations costs. The USGS has set aside $20M for volcano monitoring. 5-15% of these funds may be available to the
PNSN, CWU, and CVO for improvements in regional monitoring. There is talk of NSF launching an initial stage of a
transportable onshore/offshore, seismic/geodetic margins experiment in Cascadia that could bring additional resources
to the region.
Closing Discussion
Steve Palmer asked, are you ensuring that these numerous upgrades, both under way and potential are moving us
towards where we want to be in 5-10 years? PNSN honchos waffled about multiple goals and uncertainty in planning, but
asserted all changes are going in a good direction.
Steve Palmer raised the theme of more engagement of the RAC during the year. asAnnual Report required by the
USGS to the RAC, as well. All agreed this is sensible. With more information flowing to the committee the RAC could
spend less time getting updates and more time discussing and advising.
Eric Holdeman recommended that we prepare initiatives and "shovel-ready" projects, and then expose legislators
to them. The Legislature could then more easily enact enabling legislation in response to geophysical events in the
PNW and elsewhere that push seismic risk reduction up in priority. He also mentioned that Port security grants may be
available, and would try to send details to Bill Steele.
CB Crouse requested a room next year with better ability to view
our dark and illegible slides, all nodded.
Meeting Adjourned at 2:20pm
List of AC attendees
Tamra Biasco, FEMA
Ray Cakir, WA DNR
Susan Chang, City of Seattle DPD
Harvey Coffman, WSDOT
CB Crouse, URS
Eric Holdeman, Port of Tacoma
Vicki McConnell, DOGAMI
Steve Palmer, GeoDesign, Inc.
John Schelling, WA EMD
Richard Schroeldel, Pierce County DEM
Timothy Walsh, WA DNR
PNSN, USGS attendees
Craig Weaver
John Vidale
Paul Bodin
Bill Steele
Andy Delorey
Art Frankel - by phone
AC members who could not participate John Hooper
Leon Kempner
Dave Norman
Bill Perkins
TJ
McDonald
Anne Trehu
Tim Melbourne
Additional information
SF Community Plan For Seismic Safety (CAPSS) Project
Seattle Urban Hazard Maps
Crew Earthquake Scenarios
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For problems with this page contact:
bill@ess.washington.edu.
