2017 PNSN, PNW ANSS Advisory Committee Meeting
2017 ANSS-PNW Advisory Committee Meeting
May 23rd, 2017
Waterfront Activities Center, University of Washington, Seattle
The following notes were taken by Ian Stone (PNSN)
Meeting started at 9:30
Bill Steele welcomes everyone and introduces CB Crouse. Introductions around the room. Community Reports
Project 17 & next NEHRP Seismic Provisions
CB Crouse:
Project 17 is reviewing ground motion and design value maps for update in the 2020 NEHRP Provisions. Primary work areas are updating site class definitions to better align with modern ground motion prediction equations, reevaluating the risk basis for maps, and providing stability in mapped ground motions (reduce degree of changes between updates). Some direct changes being made are:
-eliminating Fa and Fv coefficients -adding basin effects, where possible -smoothing spectral design curves
As for reevaluating risk basis for maps, primary question is in choosing between Risk Targeted MCE or to revert to uniform Hazard with lower return period (~1000yrs), or even revert to uniform hazard with traditional return period. Prefer first 2 options, though no consensus at the moment; will have a decision by next year.
Q: how will this affect Seattle?
-unclear at the moment; probably will not change design standards by a lot, but even small changes cause protest in design community.
Q: how will site class be calculated in basins? -methods for doing so are still being discussed
USGS EQ Program Update
Reducing risk where tectonic plates collide – A USGS plan to advance subduction zone science
Joan Gomberg:
USGS just completed a science plan focusing broadly on subduction zones under USGS responsibility (Cascadia, Marianas, Alaska, Puerto Rico). The plan is driven by stakeholder needs and interests (monitoring slow slip and tremor, optimization and cost reduction of offshore geodetic/seismic monitoring, high resolution topography on land and at sea, refining recurrence of Cascadian megathrust events, high-res submarine mapping of Seattle and South Whidbey Island faults). Also just completed the Cascadia Region Coordinated Earthquake risk Communication Plan Recommendation Report, which describes how to communicate and act in the instance of some possible precursory activity on the Cascadia subduction zone.
Q: how is this communication plan different than what is already implemented within NEPEC?
-this expands on NEPEC protocol and includes more organizations Q: do the offshore/onshore records agree on recurrence of Cascadia?
-some agreement in greater number of M8’s in southern Cascadia, and larger M9 events
are generally well recorded in both.
Brian Sherrod (over phone):
-ShakeAlert is resource-limited for public rollout with respect to incoming data and latency, as well as the rate at which we can report information to the public. Working on it.
-Tim Jurgensen has been hired as an IT Specialist
-Regional coordinator and another electronic technician positions are being held up by USGS hiring freeze, waiver forms in DOI director’s office awaiting signature.
-Proposals are in for the next couple of years for funding on EEW, will hear recommendations from funding committee in the next few weeks.
-Central Washington University is also working on some data acquisition projects associated with ShakeAlert.
-We have good cooperation with our Canadian colleagues with respect to EEW, though some logistics of implementation need to be worked out
Q: what would be roles and responsibilities of regional coordinator?
-interface with UW and California USGS office, dealing with permitting and siting stations, ensuring the system is robust.
WA EMD
Maximilian Dixon:
RFP: CREW along with WA and OR EMD have NEHRP RFP funding for education of first responders and others for implementation and use of EEW and Tsunami warning. Interested in using hazard mitigation grant funding for investigation of test project at Ocosta Elementary school (vertical evacuation center on WA coast), first responder training.
Q: Does the Ocosta elementary school meet the tsunami design standards (based on ASCE-16 standards for tsunami design)?
-yes
Q: Could you comment on the Governor’s seismic safety subcabinet (i.e., Resilient Washington Committee)?
-met recently with Governor Inslee on preparing state for earthquakes, including implementation of EEW. Report will be out in July or August. Looking into putting together a packet for state legislators.
Oregon Updates
-EMD was not able to make it today. Jeff (from seismic safety committee in Oregon) commented. Had a frank discussion with DOGAMI about offshore monitoring cable. DOGAMI is resistant to adopting this resource.
-There are a number of bills on transportation upgrades going through state legislature. Several 100M of dollars in grant money has been dispersed for upgrade of schools. Other bills on mass care and tsunami issues are working through legislature at the moment.
Q: one thing that is important to consider: Oregon state OEM is looking to increase resilience of bridges to survive through M9 event and remain operational.
Canadian Updates
John Cassidy:
Earthquake monitoring, research, and related developments in British Columbia
-150 stations across Canada are being rebuilt and refurbished (with 6 component seismic, many with GPS additions).
-North Coast of BC (near Haida Gwaii) is under intense investigation at the moment. Adding real time seismic and GPS to investigate hazard from Queen Charlotte fault, how it relates to hazard inland, and after-effects of 2012 earthquake.
-Active fault studies underway of Devils Mountain Fault and Queen Charlotte Fault, Leech River Fault
-Paleoseismology studies along west coast of Vancouver Island, and North Coast of BC, and Explorer Plater Region (Tsunami deposits)
-Canadian Cordilleran Array proposed to fill in blank area between AK and WA in USArray project.
-Canadian Geophysical Union Conference will be in Vancouver May 28-31, 2017.
-BC Seismic Safety Council Updates:
-5M investment towards EEW for BC
Q: will the Cordilleran array be transportable across Canada?
-that is the plan
Terron Moore (Ocean networks Canada):
-5M for 3 year project looking into EEW. Will likely leverage existing offshore cabled network for offshore stations.
-hoping to add 9 submarine instruments and 36 land based sensors by March 2019. Many sites already exist and just require upgrade (nice figure showing sensor locations). -data is not flowing yet for land stations (cyber-security issues), but working on upgrading network.
-End-user workshop was April 19 2017 to gauge interest and possible uses for EEW in BC.
-Have put together some reports on rapid alerting best practices and cost-benefit analysis for Port of Vancouver
Q: How can we access the literature review on rapid alerting best practices? -Contact Bill Steele
WA DNR
Tim Walsh:
Temporary Pascal arrays have been deployed around Washington for geologic mapping purposes. Data has been collected over Granite Falls earthquake swarm. Another array will be deployed over the Entiat swarm in Chelan County; will be out until December. Granite Falls array will be moved down to Mt. St. Helens area to monitor possible major seismic source near Chehalis River.
PNSN Status and Plans
Paul Bodin:
What is the PNSN? We use seismic data and observations to reduce seismic risk in the region. We accomplish that a variety of ways. Our core consists of the UW, UO, and USGS, and we associated with the State of Washington, the DOE, the USGS VHP, the Moore Foundation, ShakeAlert, and ANSS.
-Funding 4.5M this year (3.5M last year), growth is largely due to ShakeAlert. Support comes from a variety of sources, including USGS, Moore Foundation, ShakeAlert (Moore Foundation and ShakeAlert grants will go away this year), DOE, etc.
-We have made several hires this year, including Mouse (ShakeAlert Coordinator) and
Alex (data quality expert).
-Our data is heavily used (50,000 data requests from IRIS per year). -Hundreds of stations across WA and OR
Update on the Year in Seismicity
-~2400 earthquakes
-several swarms (Newberry, Chelan, San Juan Island, off Newport on plate interface, Bremerton, Salton, and Granite Falls)
-Bremerton swarm has been investigated using template matching and double difference. There have been three M3 mainshocks and many smaller events. Still analyzing data and discerning connections (if any) to Seattle Fault.
Q: We should consult NZ on managing traffic after a major seismic event, as large traffic might crash system/use up operating budget
-John Connolly – we are testing Amazon data distribution network for use during major
events to prevent crashing, exceedance of data usage limits. Hanford Update:
-New plan to upgrade existing stations (13) to 6 component, must be wildfire resistant. Software Update:
-QuickShake can be used to view real-time seismic data coming in.
-RedPy is being used to find repeating earthquakes in the region
-Detection threshold map for whole network in development with IRIS
-NetQuakes boxes are still under recall and upgrade (after spontaneous seismometer combustion), we’re about 2/3rds of the way through these upgrades.
Major Upcoming challenges:
-updating network and stations -coordinating roles of partners
Major ANSS Initiatives:
-station inventory system (SIS)
-reporting to ComCat
-AQMS off of Oracle and Sun onto Linux and PostgreSQL. Renate Hartog says this is going well.
Questions for the RAC from the PNSN
-Are we headed in the Right Direction? What do we need to adjust? -What is the best way to continue to manage EEW?
PNSN - UO
Leland O’Driscoll:
Description of Office. Headed by Doug Toomey
-Growth of network has been facilitated through installation of EEW stations along coast (Moore Foundation Funds), and state purchase of TA/Cascadia Initiative stations.
-There is a plan in place to add stations EEW network. DOGMAI will add 17 stations after July 4th. There will be a second round added next year (13 stations)
-Substantial progress has been made with ODOT-partnered telemetry. We also have access to the state internet network used by ODOT for transferring data
-NERO program is allowing us to place strong ground motion seismometers in select schools. -Outreach has been conducted to state legislature and K12 schools in Oregon.
Lunch Break
PNSN - CVO
Seth Moran:
Rainier lahar detection system update. System initiated in 1998, handed to Pierce County in 2000. Pierce County asked for update of system a few years ago. 3 weeks ago, 1M was directed to lahar system. Allows for addition for a broadband station, webcams, improved telemetry. We will add some more broadband stations on northwest flanks of mountain in the future. Another future goal will be moving these networks further upstream.
Status of seismic network. Looking to add 3 stations on Mt. Hood (8 at the moment); running into some push-back from wilderness groups, but looks promising. Glacier Peak only has 1 seismometer; looking to get permitting for more.
Mt. St. Helens: Forest Service (?) looking for a longer term solution for draining Spirit Lake to protect fragile debris flow dam (likely a spill-way). Need to update the seismic hazard analysis before construction of this feature.
-IAVCEI 2017 volcanology meeting will be in Portland this Fall.
PNSN Related Topics
Seattle URM initiatives
Art Frankel:
Policy committee was formed in 2012. Final meeting was on April 4th, 2017. Final Report is in progress, will be reviewed by committee and sent to Mayor and City Council. Will request mandatory retrofit for URM; provides different timelines for retrofit depending on factors such as purpose of building, number of stories, etc.; various funding options and incentives considered.
Q: what is your prediction for how this will be received?
-It’s hard to say. There are a lot of social aspects to upgrading URMs that connect to the larger housing availability issue, and upgrading URMs will likely cause displacement of some underprivileged communities.
Q: What should the PNSN do to help? How are we going to respond to this? We will be meeting a social justice issue backed largely by an emotional argument, and we need to be able to communicate the scientific importance in a way that it can be weighed against these counterarguments.
Q: How can we make it easier to tear down URMs when they are in historic districts, but are unlikely to survive an earthquake even with retrofitting?
M9 update
Art Frankel:
The M9 project has been producing broadband synthetic seismograms for M9 Cascadia earthquakes. We have been developing simulations with 3D velocity structures of the PNW; we have been handing the results of these simulations to engineers for comparison to building and design standards, for developing scenario ShakeMaps, as well as tsunami modeling.
-100m grid spacing at shallow depths, 300m spacing at deeper depths
-Modeling the slip as large M8 subevents surrounded by background slip along the full subduction zone.
-Results of modeling show significant amplification in basins
Synthetics are being saved at a density of 1km and will be available for sharing with engineers We are presently conducting 50 different simulations based on logic trees considering different locking models, hypocenter locations, slip distributions, and subevent distributions.
-Difference between best and worst case of ground motion for Seattle in initial runs is about a factor of 4. Worst case has ground motion greater than design spectra for short periods in Seattle.
Basin amplification and source characterization are major issues to tackle at the moment. Will post results from all 50 iterations on Design Safe website at UT in a few months.
Paul Bodin: We recently conducted an Urban Aftershock deployment to look at structure in Seattle Basin and prepare action plan in case of M9 after-deployment.
Q: is the response seen in simulations in the Tacoma Basin real? -Art thinks so.
Moore offshore project
David Schmidt:
Exploring an Offshore Geophysical Network for Cascadia
Goal for this program is to perform a feasibility study on instrumenting the offshore component of the subduction zone.
Final product will be a white paper the provides the motivation, design alternatives and implementation plan.
Such a network would improve EEW and tsunami warning networks, as well as provide continuous observation of the subduction zone.
Primary consideration is for a cabled array (alternatives include meshed networks)
A workshop was held in April 2017. Its goal was to provide feedback from scientists, engineers, state and federal agencies, and industry, provide a forum for discussion, and summarize design ideas.
-main benefits of a cabled array were found to be related to tsunami early warning
-weight should be given to stations with proximity to population centers.
-There is some disagreement between focusing on monitoring and warning priorities. -Currently assimilating feedback from the workshop and generating a report. Will initiate lobbying in DC soon. White paper in future as well.
Q: is the system being designed to survive an earthquake/tsunami/turbidity currents? -yes
Management Transition
John Vidale:
John will be going to SCEC. He starts August 15th. Heidi Houston will be leaving in January.
Paul and co. are drafting an advert for John’s replacement, hopefully will find someone by next spring. Looking for another seismologist as well (possibly).
Paul is in charge in the interim. Incoming person will have half/half funding from USGS and State. Half or so teaching load. Appealing position.
Paul – sad to see John go. We’ve done the metrics though, and the PNSN has 5 times as much popularity on social media as SCEC. Do with that what you will...
Development of ShakeAlert Pilot Projects
Bill Steele:
Had a workshop in September to gauge usability of ShakeAlert. Transitioning now to asking how these alerts might be important to individual organizations, how to implement these systems. We became part of the West Coast EEW system in March, creating a single primary system. Eugene Water and Electricity and RH2 are two organizations currently developing automatic response systems tied in to EEW. Bill and Leland O’Driscoll are points of contact with other companies and orgs looking to develop applications for EEW in various systems.
Any ideas about pilot programs for implementing EEW in various systems?
Q: how are telecommunications involved in pilot programs?
-With respect to alerts, cell services say we could have about 2 bits of data to work with from cell towers. These can trigger an application on phones that give very basic warning. Looking to expand these capabilities. It is worth exploring more applications in connections to cell network resilience as well.
Q: We should try and incorporate more input from Canadian partners. Q: Should provide updates on pilot testing to Washington EMD.
Q: Quality of public rollout is tied to quality of pilot projects
Discussion
Are we headed in the right direction?
Joan: counterpoint to ugly presidential budget proposal: The best thing we can do going forward is to do our job the best we can and as visibly as possible.
Teron: From the BC perspective, work here is exemplary; BC would like to coordinate and be a part of the EEW developments. Keep up the good work.
Seth: with regards to president budget. The budget number is eye-catching. Reasonable to assume that there will be some sort of media reaction to loss of funding for EEW. Good to prepare talking points about this, perhaps submit some editorials to Seattle Times.
CB: as far as a rollout, it would be good to create a video or something that will show the lay- person what the case will be if there is/isn’t an early warning network. Will help solidify effects and benefits of network. (John notes that Berkeley developed such a video).
John Cassidy: there’s a lot more to early warning than just early warning. We can do science with the stations we put out for EEW that will be important for characterizing hazard throughout region. [Paul agrees that EEW is a product that will deal with the entire spectrum of issues with Earthquake science. Steve Malone agrees that we should not lose site of the secondary benefits from implementing EEW systems, as the major warnings will only come every so often, but other things (avalanches, slow-slip, swarms) are happening all the time] -Non structural damage and injuries amount to billions in losses in other earthquakes (Northridge EQ is used as example) and could be significantly reduced by even a few seconds of warning allowing people to get to safe spots. Such an argument could be good for selling the usefulness of the EEW system.
Taron: the Great Shakeout is a great means for disseminating information about earthquake preparedness. Using these sorts of events are a great way of raising public awareness.
Maybe it would be worth it to make a website for EEW that is not the ShakeAlert website, one that focuses on regional activities and education.
Potential Action Items for 2017
1) Be thoughtful and careful connecting with users and funders with proceeding with EEW. 2) Plan B for funding in the event of bad federal funding outcomes (work with regional
partners, local government and private).
3) Work with ShakeOut to incorporate ShakeAlert EEW in exercise.
4) Regional EEW website revision as part of a long term sustainable plan
5) Basin and other long period shaking impacts within the urban basins
6) Increase data contributions form external strong motion data contributors.
7) Support of URM initiative (~70 schools are in URMs). Shame (as DOGAMI did). Placards 8) Structural instrumentation. Instrument URM structure for demonstration.
9) Follow up on post-earthquake communication plan with EMD, DNR, etc.
10) Refreshments on veranda patio
Meeting adjourned at 3:30.