HR: 0800h
AN: S21A-0259    [Abstracts]
TI: Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER): An Automated System to Estimate Impact Following Significant Earthquakes Worldwide
AU: * Earle, P S
EM: pearle@usgs.gov
AF: USGS/NEIC, U.S. Geological Survey MS 966, Box 25046, DFC, Denver, CO 80225 United States
AU: Wald, D J
EM: wald@usgs.gov
AF: USGS/NEIC, U.S. Geological Survey MS 966, Box 25046, DFC, Denver, CO 80225 United States
AU: Lastowka, L A
EM: llastowka@usgs.gov
AF: USGS/NEIC, U.S. Geological Survey MS 966, Box 25046, DFC, Denver, CO 80225 United States
AU: Quitoriano, V
EM: vinceq@usgs.gov
AF: USGS/NEIC, U.S. Geological Survey MS 966, Box 25046, DFC, Denver, CO 80225 United States
AU: Donnelly, M J
EM: madonnel@mines.edu
AF: USGS/NEIC, U.S. Geological Survey MS 966, Box 25046, DFC, Denver, CO 80225 United States
AB: The US Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center (USGS/NEIC) is developing a system to rapidly assess societal impact immediately following significant global earthquakes. NEIC's near realtime earthquake solutions are being monitored to automatically identify quakes that likely caused human suffering or damage to infrastructure, or that will attract significant media attention. Our goal is to help the USGS fulfill its mission to provide critical earthquake-related information to emergency response agencies, government agencies, the scientific community, the media, and the general public. Currently, it takes several hours to days for the media and other organizations to provide an assessment of a damaging earthquake. Our system, known as Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER), will estimate the severity of damage caused by an earthquake immediately following its location and magnitude estimation (minutes to an hour). PAGER will assess the situation based on estimated and any observed ground motions, total population exposed to varying degrees of shaking, and vulnerability of the affected region. We expect that an automated summary impact statement and associated alarms can be deployed within seconds of computing the ground-motion estimates, well before ground truth damage estimates arrive. The USGS is collaborating with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop a prototype system. The prototype will estimate ground motions using modifications to the methodology developed for ShakeMap, extended to the entire globe. Since strong-motion recordings will rarely be available for global earthquakes in realtime, we will rely on predicted rather than observed ground motions. Site corrections will be approximated using a combination of elevation and topographic slope (see Wald et al. this meeting) and the exposed population will be determined using Oak Ridge National Lab's Landscan2002 global population database. PAGER will be an iterative system with new alarms issued as better estimates of magnitude, location, fault orientation, finite fault effects, and felt reports become available. We will present details of the assessment algorithm and examples from the prototype system.
UR: http://gldresponse.cr.usgs.gov/pager/
DE: 7223 Seismic hazard assessment and prediction
DE: 7299 General or miscellaneous
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting