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Learning from earthquakes and the US plan for coordinating post-earthquake investigations

Thomas Holzer

Careful documentation of earthquake effects is essential to improve prediction and mapping of seismic hazards, to design safer engineered structures, to refine loss modeling, and to formulate better public policy. Nevertheless, post-earthquake investigations typically are conducted with little coordination among a diverse range of professional specialists because damaging earthquakes are infrequent. Recently the U.S. National Earthquake Hazards Program (NEHRP) developed a Plan to coordinate technical post-earthquake investigations. The Plan requires that the NEHRP agencies and their partners convene immediately after a significant earthquake and decide whether or not to formally implement the Plan. Upon implementation, a physical technical information clearinghouse and web site are established to coordinate the immediate post-earthquake reconnaissance (Phase I). All field investigators regardless of affiliation are encouraged to work within the clearinghouse. The Plan requires that a NEHRP Investigations Coordinator (NIC) be appointed within 24 hours to oversee the coordination, to establish long-term research priorities, and to ensure appropriate liaison with emergency managers. The NIC also has the responsibility to convene a meeting at the conclusion of the reconnaissance to establish priorities for substantive collection of perishable data by NEHRP funded investigators (Phase II). In about one month after the event, the Plan calls for a workshop to establish priorities for long-term research to be funded by NEHRP agencies (Phase III). The Plan also recognized that more systematic collection and archiving of observations from post-earthquake investigations are needed in the United States, particularly with regards to damage and loss data.

The Plan recognizes that a fundamental tenet of emergency management is that the execution of a plan is as important as the plan itself. Thus, upon completion of the Plan, three exercises were conducted with “surprise” earthquake scenarios to familiarize the NEHRP agencies with the Plan. In the likely absence of frequent opportunities to implement the Plan, an annual review of the Plan was also recommended to maintain institutional familiarity with it and to ensure it is up to date.

Paper P01 [Presentation]

Keynote Address Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 Session 5 Session 6 Poster Session Session 8