• Home
• Earthquake Information
  • Earthquake Special Reports
  • Earthquake Information
• Earthquake Early Warning
• Products and Services
  • Description of Products & Services
  • Software (CISNDisplay
    and ShakeCast)
  • ShakeMaps
• CISN Organization
  • Who We Are
  • CISN Networks
  • Advisory Committee
  • Standards Committee
  • Steering Committee
  • Operations Committee
    (Password Required)
  • CISN Documents
• Contact Us

OES Report

Summary Report # 01 from the PMG to the CISN Steering and Advisory Committees

15 April 2002

Written by the PMG: E. Hauksson (chair), L. Gee, D. Given, D. Oppenheimer, and T. Shakal.

Introduction

The member institutions of the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) (Dept. of Conservation, Calif. Geological Survey (formerly CDMG), Caltech, UC Berkeley, USGS Menlo Park, and USGS Pasadena) have begun planning and implementation. The CISN Steering and Advisory Committees provide oversight and long term planning, and have charged the Program Management Group (PMG) with implementing the CISN. The CISN is a multi-year project that started officially on 1 July 2001 with PMG planning activities, and this is the first progress report.

The focus of CISN is the modernization, and operation of seismic network infrastructure statewide and the near real-time delivery of standardized earthquake products. The CISN will provide emergency responders with critical information such as rapid earthquake notification and automatic maps of the distribution of damaging shaking (ShakeMap) in the aftermath following large earthquakes. In addition, many structures throughout California have been designed without adequate knowledge of the level of strong ground motions produced by major earthquakes. The earthquake engineering community will be able to advance their understanding of how structures perform during strong earthquakes using the new CISN seismic data.

OES is providing leadership and funding to integrate existing monitoring efforts into a single system, to address effectively the need for seismic information in the State. Advances in technology are making it possible to integrate the existing, separate earthquake monitoring networks in California into a single seismic monitoring system. The California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) provides the organizational and implementation framework for the new system through the establishment of three operational centers: the Northern and Southern Management Centers for routine earthquake processing and the Engineering Management Center for engineering data products.

Status of CISN Contracts from OES and ANSS/USGS

1. CGS: received 1 March 2002 ($0.920M)
2. UC Berkeley: received 27 March 2002 ($0.736M)
3. Caltech: contract being processed ($1.840M)
4. USGS Menlo Park: waiting for equipment acquisition (~$0.50M)

The OES contract award process that started in early September 2001 has taken much longer than anticipated. Both Caltech and UC Berkeley obtained loans to maintain operations and facilitate planning and other preparation activities.

Program Management Group (PMG) Activities

The PMG has had conference calls approximately every two weeks since September 2001. The focus of these calls has been to coordinate statewide CISN issues such as robustness, integration, product standardization, and to provide direction for the CISN Standards Group.

Robustness issues. If a CISN center is not able to report, it is important that the other two centers have enough data to take over the reporting responsibility. The PMG discussed implementation plans for exchange of time series from seismic stations directly to two centers, instead of only one center, which is the usual practice. Similarly, the PMG discussed approaches to calibrate seismic production algorithms to handle statewide data. Several of these issues are being worked on by the Standards Group.

Statewide Integration. The CISN PMG and its Standards Group have discussed and prepared a draft implementation plan for the new CISN dedicated communications backbone, which is being reviewed (see attached Figure). This backbone will allow sharing of: 1) waveforms; 2) parametric data; 3) state of health messages; and 4) products between centers. OES in Sacramento will be connected to this backbone. To facilitate statewide integration, the PMG has discussed implementation issues related to exchange of picks, codas, magnitude amplitudes, and amplitudes used in ShakeMap production.

Product Standardization. To ensure that all three CISN centers provide the same location, magnitude, ShakeMap and other products, the PMG has worked on plans for calibration of algorithms and improved data availability. The intent of CISN is to have calibrated algorithms and all parametric data available at each of the three centers to ensure robustness and standardization of products. Below we summarize activities being done by the CISN partners.

California Geological Survey (CGS) CISN Activities

• With receipt of an approved Interagency Agreement on March 1, CGS began station installation and other CISN project work. Initial station work is focused on upgrading selected existing stations, to get as many stations in as possible this fiscal year, despite starting work two thirds through the year. Six stations have been upgraded and are on line, including:
  • 47006 Gilroy - Gavilan College
  • 47524 Hollister - Glorietta & Pine
  • 57600 San Jose - Emory & Bellrose
  • 57604 San Jose - Santa Clara County Bldg Grnds
  • 57563 San Jose - Santa Theresa Hills
  • 58655 San Rafael - 2nd & Lincoln
• CGS is ordering equipment for stations to be installed and upgraded. Equipment will be purchased this year for stations to be instrumented in both this fiscal year and next fiscal year, as another step to manage and accommodate the late arrival of funding.
• Discussion by the Program Management has clarified the importance of a dedicated high speed T1 Internet ring for robust communication between the CISN networks and with OES. Ordering of lines and routers will begin soon.

UC Berkeley CISN Activities

• The BSL has initiated investigation of several sites for CISN instrumentation. 5 potential sites have been investigated (Alder Springs, Pt. Reyes and vicinity, Homestake Mine, Mt. Madonna, and Pacheco Peak CDF facility). Permitting is underway for Alder Springs through the USFS. Homestake Mine and/or Pacheco Peak are likely choices for the 2nd planned site. A possible site location in the Homestake Mine was discussed with officials from Homestake and permitting with UC Davis (who is taking over the mine) should be feasible. The Pacheco Peak site requires some negotiation for landowners over the road access. These sites will have collocated broadband and strong-motion instrumentation.
• The BSL has received quotations for sensors and dataloggers from Quanterra and Kinemetrics. The purchase order for the dataloggers and broadband seismometers will be issued next week. The purchase order for the EpiSensors will be issued later in the month.
• BSL staff are working as part of the Standards Committee to address a number of issues related to statewide integration. BSL staff is taking the lead in developing the technical plans for the CISN Intranet and are participating in the Working Groups for planning and testing issues related to increasing robustness and standardizing products. The BSL has begun to implement software developed as part of the TriNet project for the continuous processing of waveform data. Further development is required to integrate the TriNet software into the Northern California Management Center.
• The BSL has hired two people to assist in CISN activities. Jim Yan was hired on Feb 22 as a Programmer/Analyst II. He is involved in software development related to statewide integration. Cathy Thomas was hired on March 20th as a Junior Development Engineer. She will be involved in the effort to install seismic stations and operation/maintenance of the network.
• The BSL and the USGS Menlo Park have established the Web site www.cisn.org to provide an official presence for the CISN on the Web. The Web site currently contains basic information about the CISN and its member institutions as well as a directory of earthquake information.

USGS Menlo Park: ANSS/CISN Activities

• The CISN proposed to the ANSS that 30 stations be installed in the San Francisco Bay region in FY2002. Approximately 11 of the sites would be free-field sites installed and operated by the Northern California Seismic Network (NCSN) for improved ShakeMap coverage. The remaining 19 stations would be urban reference sites in the San Francisco Bay area installed and operated by the USGS National Strong Motion Program (NSMP). The CISN also proposed that University Hall on the campus of the University of California Berkeley be instrumented. Acceptance of the CISN proposal by ANSS will occur in April when the national instrumentation contract will be awarded and when the ANSS will know how many sites it can afford to install. The ANSS has informally indicated that it will not likely fund the instrumentation of University Hall this year.
• Mehmet Celebi has collaborated with Chris Poland, Chairman of the CISN Advisory Committee, to form a Structural Instrumentation Advisory Subcommittee under the CISN Advisory Committee to address the issues of setting criteria for selecting and prioritizing structures. This subcommittee was set up with branches in Northern and Southern California, and the first meetings were held in March. Engineers from practice and academia attended and have agreed to provide specific input on candidate buildings and reasons why they should be considered, which will strongly stimulate the refinement of criteria for selection and prioritization.

Caltech/USGS Pasadena CISN Activities

• Caltech and USGS staff has maintained the TriNet stations in southern California, including tasks such as reactive site visits and proactive software upgrades. Several TriNet stations came on line in December 2001 and January 2002, which use a communications link across the Edwards Air Force Base. Nojoqui Falls (NJQ), located near Santa Barbara, also came on line using frame relay. At the request of site owner, we have removed the station Baker (BKR) in the Mojave Desert and made arrangements to relocate at a nearby station (Turquoise Mountain).
• Routine data processing and production of near real-time earthquake information was continued. A total of 3,335 earthquakes were reported with 106 earthquakes of M>3.0 from 1 Dec. 2001 to 28 Feb. 2002. We met with Caltrans regarding applications for ShakeMap for Bridge evaluation. TVMap greatly improved; now automatically pushed to Los Angeles NBC affiliate KNBC. ShakeMaps appeared on KNBC, KCAL9, and a San Diego Affiliate newscasts following the M5.7 south of Calexico (Feb 22). Several tasks related to upgrade of the real-time processing systems have been completed or are in progress, including upgrades of: 1) CPU boards and memory in the main server computers; 2) writing task planning documents for the UNIX operating system from Solaris 2.6 to 2.8 and associated upgrades of all seismic application software; 3) complete IP implementation for communications to remote stations; and 4) calibration of magnitude determination algorithms and definition of subnets used for event detection. Wrote specifications for a new earthquake information display application.
• Held several planning meetings on statewide issues. Participated on PMG and CISN Standards committee, attending a meeting in Berkeley and conference calls and in writing a draft of a task-planning document for the CISN backbone communication network. Selected 10 stations for real-time data exchange from the field and began addressing IP communication issues.
• Continued work with Jim Goltz of OES to prepare for an outreach workshop in San Diego (6 April 2002) and is sponsored jointly by OES and presents new technologies for emergency management in the 21st century. Held an outreach workshop on 17 January 2002 for the local media. Responded to inquiries from public and the media about earthquake activity.