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SAFRR Tsunami Scenario is Released

This new disaster planning scenario from the USGS and partners depicts the potential effects in California of a tsunami generated by a M9.1 Alaskan earthquake. Some include: 15 ft amplitudes, days of strong currents, 1/3 of small boats damaged or sunk, $4-5 B property damage and $1-5 B in business interruption losses,1800 blocks inundated wetting the equivalent of 70,000 single-family dwellings, 5 miles of roads damaged including the San Francisco Bay Bridge toll plaza, $100 million in damage to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and only 2 to 4 hours’ warning time. This is the USGS Science Application for Risk Reduction (SAFRR) program’s 3rd major disaster scenario. It represents the effort of more than 150 earth scientists, engineers, and social scientists from more than 40 public and private entities. SPA’s Keith Porter led the assessment of physical damage. SPA’s Charlie Scawthorn led the assessment of fire following tsunami. See our publications page for the report and related documents. Contact us for a briefing (like this one) on what your organization can learn from the SAFRR tsunami scenario.

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San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors Unanimously Approve the Mandatory Soft Story Retrofit Ordinance

The ordinance grew out of the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety, which SPA’s Charlie Scawthorn helped to lead, and the soft story portion of the study, for which Keith Porter performed the risk analyses. The ordinance requires the evaluation and strengthening of soft-story, high-occupancy wood frame dwellings like the kind that collapsed in the Marina District in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Mayor Ed Lee signed it into law on April 18, 2013, the 107th Anniversary of the 1906 Great San Francisco Earthquake. This ordinance will almost certainly save lives and homes, and we could not be more proud to have been involved. Contact us to explore whether your buildings are at risk in the Big One.

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Invited Lectures at Lloyds of London

JUNE 21-22, 2012

On June 21-22, 2012 SPA’s Charles Scawthorn gave two Invited Lectures at Lloyds of London.  The June 21 lecture in the Willis Auditorium was on the March 11 Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, and the June 22 lecture in the Old Library of the Lloyds Building was on Fire Following Earthquake in California, both rooms being filled to capacity.  Abstract of the Lectures

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Helping to Shape the Department of the Interior’s Strategic Sciences Group

MARCH 2012

In March 2012, SPA’s Keith Porter participated in a workshop with a small group of scholars and scientists to shape the newly created Department of the Interior Strategic Sciences Group (SSG). SSG is intended as a scientific rapid-response group to provide the Department of the Interior with science-based assessments of crises affecting Departmental resources. Its formation was motivated by the success of an ad hoc group that provided Interior with an independent assessment of scientific issues surrounding the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe of 2011.

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ROVER is Now Platform-Independent.

ROVER (Rapid Observation of Vulnerability and Estimation of Risk), the FEMA-sponsored software for performing pre- and post-earthquake rapid safety assessments on mobile devices, is now platform independent, operating on virtually any Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, and Windows device with an active data connection. ROVER brings the advantages of smartphones to the de facto paper-based standards for safety screening and tagging of buildings, FEMA 154 and ATC-20. ROVER integrates these two paper-based standards with HAZUS-MH and ShakeCast, and adds various advantages of a software solution: built-in soil and seismology geodatabases, unlimited watermarked and captioned digital photos, automatic geolocation, real-time process control, a secure web-accessible database, and other features. Visit www.roverready.org to download the software and to view assessments by independent testers of the software.

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Water Supply in Regards to Fire Following Earthquakes

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

On 10 November 2011, Charles Scawthorn presented the final report on Water Supply In Regards to Fire Following Earthquakes to the California Seismic Safety Commission.  The report summarizes research Scawthorn conducted at the University of California at Berkeley’s Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), where he is a Visiting Scholar.  Key findings were that both fire and water agencies in urban California expect water distribution systems to fail following a major earthquake, but that not enough is being done.  A recommended program of action to improve this situation was approved by the Commission, and will be implemented in the coming year.  The full report is available here, and a four-page summary is available here.

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Soft-Story Buildings at Risk

OCTOBER 13, 2011

SPA’s Keith Porter spoke about the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety’s Soft-Story Program at the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California Buildings At Risk Earthquake Loss Reduction Summit, at USC in Los Angeles, on 13 October 2011. Dr. Porter’s talk covered the engineering issues, but also addressed broader lessons from CAPSS about formulating and enacting a mandatory mitigation policy that could be adopted in local building codes. His comments are available here.

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National Insurance Conference of Canada

SEPTEMBER 25-27, 2011

SPA’s Keith Porter spoke in a plenary session of the 5th annual NICC in Vancouver, 25-27 September 2011. Dr. Porter spoke on the subject of ShakeOut, Tohoku, and their Implications for Canada. He offered lessons on how to make a similar planning scenario for British Columbia effective. More information on the conference can be found here. Dr. Porter’s remarks can be viewed here.

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National Academy of Sciences Summit for Managing Extreme Events

SEPTEMBER 7-9, 2011

SPA’s Charles Scawthorn and Keith Porter attended this Washington, DC event on 7-9 September 2011, which brought together leaders from the research, policy, and re/insurance communities with expertise in various aspects of extreme events. By convening the resources and talents of the diverse communities involved in predicting, managing, and ultimately paying for extreme events, the NAS hopes to create cross-sectoral partnerships and find ways to reduce risk to extreme events. One outcome appears to be a plan to create a hurricane planning scenario.

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SPA Risk Publishes a Report on the Tohoku Earthquake

MARCH 11, 2011

SPA’s Charles Scawthorn and Keith Porter have prepared a report on the effects of the 11 March 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. The report summarizes the seismotectonics, ground-shaking and tsunami runup, and addresses in detail the impacts of the earthquake on lifelines, fire following earthquake, and economic impacts. The report is available here.