THE USGS TOOLBOX FOR EARTHQUAKE PLANNING AND RESPONSE

The U.S. Geological Survey, under the auspices of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS), is continuing to develop new and improved tools for post-earthquake information and response. Existing tools range from passive, Web-based post-earthquake information requiring no pre-event configuration, to sophisticated damage-assessment and active notification systems that require pre-event set up, IT expertise, and knowledge of one’s inventory’s vulnerabilities.

Customizable earthquake notifications are provided with ENS (Earthquake Notification Service), adding active alerting to rapid earthquake information products available via Web pages. Building off the ShakeMap system, we describe ShakeCast, a rapid impact assessment system for critical lifeline utilities upon which we rely in the post-disaster environment. The new PAGER (Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response) system automatically identifies earthquakes that will be of societal importance, well in advance of ground-truth or news accounts, and now plays a primary alerting role for global earthquake disasters. In the near future, this system will produce response-oriented alerts that include fatality and loss estimates (and their uncertainties) for the wide variety of global risk environments. We also describe a suite of research tools produced in the minutes to hours after an earthquake that directly feed into and reduce uncertainties in our real time products, and which will help improve our response capabilities in the future. Finally, we are producing a comprehensive suite of earthquake planning scenarios that directly integrate with the aforementioned tools to enhance pre-event preparedness using the suite of products that will be available after a major event.

We will describe how first responders, critical lifeline utilities, other companies, the media, and individuals can use all of these tools for making decisions about earthquake planning and response in both local and global environments.