Ginny: A military partnership would be beneficial to the support of ANSS in Washington and probably the rest of the country.
Carol: Would site-geology and/or shaking effects be considered sensitive information at a Navy site thus restricting use of the data.
Craig: Some of the geotechnical information at Navy sites is already publicly available, eg, bore-hole data. Also, there is a precedent of the presence of monitoring equipment in restricted facilities. With care and coordination all data should be available to anyone.
Craig: Wash-DOT is examining methods for stopping traffic, eg. on the Alaska Way Viaduct, during significant ground motion from earthquakes.
George: The ANSS Interim National Steering Subcommittee has made
recommendations to the National Implementation Committee and to the Regional
Steering Committees:
Steve: The University of Washington (Provost's office) has been supporting the PNW ANSS activities for $75K a year; however, fiscal 2002 is the last year this will be done. These funds were provided, at least partially to tide the operations over until appropriate state funding is forthcoming.
George: The Nisqually earthquake showed that the regional network infrastructure can be improved. ShakeMap is nice but maybe regional input could be incorporated. Does ShakeMap meet the needs of regional users? A process for the improvement of ShakeMap and other real-time products should be developed. ShakeMap needs to be integrated into HAZUS for the PNW. One thing learned from Nisqually was that "every earthquake has a footprint". As more earthquakes occur, these footprints can be overlayed and to learn something new from the combination.
Craig: Discussions at the National Steering Committee meeting regarding the instrumentation of structures was confusing and no obvious direction was forthcoming. Regions were encouraged to try to develop plans but not at the expense of continuing to install free-field and reference stations.
2). Report on the COSMOS meeting of last fall on ANSS monitoring of
structures and its relevance to the PNW. - CB Crouse (summary
in PDF)
(Table
1, Table
2).
CB: There is a recommendation of matching numbers of structure sites
and free field/reference sites. This doesn't apply to some regions and
the 50/50 parity would need some justification. One structure with 10-30
channels is the equivalent of 10 free field sites.
John: As discussed previously, a portable array can be used for monitoring the spectral characteristics of buildings. The fundamental period of buildings drives all other engineering activity. Evaluating a buildings condition after an earthquake can be done looking for spectral changes before and after large earthquakes.
Steve: I brought this up to the NIC who thought it was a good idea but was more research and ANSS is about earthquake monitoring and is thus not main stream ANSS, at least at current funding levels.
Craig: But the ANSS will have a portable element. We can justify the use of portable instruments for more than just chasing aftershocks.
CB: This is not a huge drain on resources, and could easily be justified as monitoring buildings state of health.
Steve: An action item is for CB and John to write a 1-page rationale for using ANSS portable instruments to monitor the free period of a building. This will be taken to the TIC as for their consideration to include as part of the ANSS portable system.
Craig: Capturing data is the role of ANSS, whether it is main-shocks, aftershocks, or free periods of buildings.
John: Instrumenting structures needs to be well planned. Otherwise, it's not even worth doing. In some cases, 3 instruments in a building does not give you a handle on complicated building models. In some cases, several instruments may be more appropriate. It needs to be thought out before the instruments are installed.
Marc: Is there geotechnical or bore-hole data available for the unique structures?
Steve: There is a need to disperse seismograph sites away from Puget Sound and expand into Oregon. The combination of DOGAMI instruments, USGS internally funded instruments and ANSS instruments makes it possible for up to 7 instruments in Oregon this year. Two are being installed within a week or so (BPA sub-stations). Tentative plans for the three other instruments will be in DOGAMI offices in Portland, in Bend, and Baker or La Grande.
CB: The Nisqually event raised many issues.
Marc: It might be interesting to examine sites that did NOT have liquefaction
during Nisqually but were expected to do so.
20 ANSS stations - 15 are reference, 5 are free field 6 CREST Tsunami Monitoring Stations - free field 3 USGS Stations in BPA facilities - reference
Thus there were 11 new free field sites and 18 new reference sites.
To meet recommendations of ANSS Regional Advisory Siting Subcommittee stations were installed in :
CREST stations, with both strong motion and broadband sensors, were installed along the coast of Oregon and Washington for monitoring of tsunamigenic earthquakes.
Additional activities were increased power hardening of free field sites. One hundred amp-hour batteries will power both the seismograph and the communications equipment for at least 3 days. The seismographs are configured to record internally triggered data in addition to sending the real time data. PNSN will also be adding small back-up power systems to several reference sites.
PNSN now has a total of 78 strong motion stations, where 72 are sending data in real time.
Plans for 2002 include:
6 ANSS stations, 2-4 in Puget Sound and 2-4 in Oregon 3 (or more) stations
for DOGAMI, located in Oregon 2 USGS/BPA sites in Oregon
Initial ANSS request is for $35M for 5 years. ANSS is being funded at the 10% level. A problem for ANSS is that differences between the administration's priorities and Congress's results in low probability of increased funding this year. Ginny was part of a group of 8 people, including lobbyists for SSA and IRIS who met with representatives or staffers of ten different members of congress.
EMD uses the rationale that they are a "life-safety" organization to maintain their level of state funding. Washington and other state EMD's can have more influence in the state regarding funding. There is a need to better coordinates all 3 states in the Pacific Northwest: Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
A goal of the EMD is to raise about $270k. These funds would stay within a state agency but would be for assisting the PNSN/ANSS efforts. In comparison, the California state funding is around $3.9M, about the same level of the entire ANSS national funding.
Steve claimed his report was bleak and short. He organized a meeting
of Idaho seismic network operators and organizations interested in earthquake
information (emergency management, power and utility companies, etc) in
January 2002. Steve Malone and Harley Benz attended to provide background
and information about the PNSN.
The situation in Idaho is complicated because of several different seismic networks operating independently of one another and mostly with little to no support. Steve has proposed partnering between Idaho Disaster Services and the Idaho Department of Geology.to develop a virtual state seismic network using the exiting networks and the ANSS structure. It would need to include Boise as the urban target for ANSS. At this time there seems no major reason for Idaho not to have a prime connection with the Inter-mountain region of the ANSS and a secondary connection with the PNW. A NSMP station has recently been installed in Boise, Idaho.
George: This is a nice questionnaire. It's a useful tool in the important task of educating the public. CREW can help facilitate the distribution of the questionnaire if needed. Maybe the questionnaire should have some region specific questions on it.
Rose: The Oregon Seismic Safety Commission would be very happy to help with the distribution of the questionnaire.
Marc: We should consider the length of the questionnaire. Most people won't take the time to fill it out if it is going to take more than 5 minutes.
Steve: An option is to target the recipients of the questionnaire so that we can have a high return rate.
There should be some additional questions which are specific to the PNW added to the questionnaire to get more specific information. Bill Steele will draft a few of these questions.
The discussion seemed to suggest that the next meeting should not occur
until there were specific reasons but that in the time frame of mid to
late summer would be appropriate when the next round of instruments were
being installed.