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ANSS Funding -
The line item in the USGS budget for fiscal 2002 is pretty much the same
as it was for the past year; about $4M. This is significantly below the
approximately $35M per year authorized for the development and
installation of the ANSS. The small amounts of money thus far appropriated
has gone to the purchase and installation of about 180 instruments distributed
in six urban areas. A small part of the funding went to the development
of plans for the future; primarily travel for meetings of volunteers.
In a meeting with the under secretary for science of the Department of
Interior by several of us from the SSA we got the impression that the
ANSS was an important initiative of the USGS but that this administration's
priorities for the next year would not include it. We were encouraged to
come back and make our case next year,
particularly if we can show serious interest
by local governments and industry in the products the ANSS could provide.
The USGS budegt for the current year (2002) was recently passed and contained
only $300K more than last year for the ANSS. This is expected to continue
the slow startup of ANSS activities but there is some question about
how much we can do. See the Implementaiton Committee report below.
Regional Implementation Plan -
Our draft
National Implementation Committee meeting -
In early September the regional coordinators of all ANSS regions met
in Golden, CO to
discuss our respective regional plans and to coordinate the national effort
based on funds expected for next year. The total number of instruments
requested by the coordinators for installation during the
next year greatly exceeded the
funds available. We were advised that it was time to include more of the
country in the new instrument plans and to include some national backbone
stations. Because the staff of the PNSN is tasked to the limit getting
the existing stations operating smoothly, our processing system fully
automated to use the data from the existing stations and because there
seems to be no local sources of funding
(Washington State or local industries) to help with these activities we
requested only 6 new instruments for the next year rather than the
20 new ones as we got the last two years. Four of these instruments
will be for the Portland, Oregon area. Two national backbone stations
may be installed in our region (southern and eastern Oregon).
Also, a possible instrumentation plan for highway bridges in the Seattle
area has not gone forward.
This is file /SEIS/ANSS/status.0101.html modified 2/7/2001- If you
see any problems or have comments about these pages send e-mail: bill@ess.washington.edu