Reclamation Strong Motion Program

Session: Regional Earthquake Centers: Highlights and Challenges [Poster]
Type: Poster
Date: 4/28/2020
Time: 08:00 AM
Room: Ballroom
Description: 

The Bureau of Reclamation’s Dam Safety Program ensures dams do not present unreasonable risk to people, property and the environment. A component of the Dam Safety Program is the Strong Motion Monitoring Program (SMMP) which assesses and estimates various ground motion parameters (PGA, PGV, PGD, RSA, AI) for both instrumented and non-instrumented facilities. SMMP also provides strong-motion data to assess validity of engineering numerical models. Furthermore, the SMMP provides earthquake notification, analysis and related information to dam safety personnel, facility managers, dam engineers and cooperators to make informed decisions on implementation of Emergency Action Plans for facilities that may have been affected by strong ground shaking.

Since 2016, the SMMP has been planning and developing its modernization with implementation of an automated real-time Reclamation Earthquake Notification System (BOR ENS) in the Fall of 2018 and launched full-scale strong-motion instrumentation upgrades in 2019. The instrumentation upgrades were completed at a subset of Reclamation facilities (7 of 33) prioritized to provide data from active tectonic regimes in support of engineering interests and analysis related to concrete & embankment structures.

Modernization includes improved sensor coupling and real-time continuous data acquisition with waveforms and metadata available at Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS-DMC). Selected strong-motion data are retrieved from IRIS-DMC and archived by the Center for Engineering Strong Motion Data. Likewise, BOR ENS triggered strong-motion data along with engineering parameters will be archived at Reclamation. Real-time continuous data acquisition (non-triggered) offers additional valuable data to perform advanced analyses to measure site response characteristics, assess structural responses from both natural and non-natural sources and correlate with real-time GPS static monitoring.

Presenting Author: Mark Meremonte

Authors