The USGS Earthquake Program enlists the talents and expertise of many, including academia, other government agencies, and the private sector through grants and cooperative agreements, and also through various types of partnerships. Partnerships bring two benefits. The first, of course, is they leverage scarce resources. But, perhaps more importantly, they link researchers to practitioners, thus expediting application of research results to loss reduction practices. I want to highlight some exciting new and expanded partnerships. In Southern California, we are implementing a state-of-theart seismic monitoring system, in partnership with Caltech and the California Division of Mines and Geology, that will provide rapid earthquake information to the Los Angeles area. In Central California, we are engaged in a multi-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric Company to improve the assessment of hazards and potential damage associated with large earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay area. In the Pacific Northwest, we are working with NOAA and FEMA to implement a new tsunami hazard mitigation plan. The plan was developed in cooperation with emergency managers and earth scientists from California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii. Nationally, we are also seeking to build links to the private insurance sector, which we believe can be a forceful agent for promoting loss reduction. We have developed a Statement of Understanding with the Insurance Institute for Property Loss Reduction to raise awareness in the insurance sector about earthquakes and their hazards, and to help institutionalize earthquake disaster mitigation as a public value. We have been involved in intense program planning over the past year. We have just completed a new 5-year plan for the USGS component of NEHRP. Under this plan, the USGS program will focus on three activities-delivering usable products for earthquake loss reduction, providing earthquake information, and pursuing fundamental research on earthquake occurrence and earthquake effects. In conclusion, I am optimistic about the future of the NEHRP program and the USGS role within this critical program. The present offers many challenges to Federal agencies and programs, but I believe that the USGS and its sister NEHRP agencies are working boldly and effectively to meet these challenges and to assure a safer future for the country. I would be happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Dr. Leahy follows:] TESTIMONY OF P. PATRICK LEAHY, CHIEF GEOLOGIST BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SPACE OF THE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION INTRODUCTION Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to present testimony on the reauthorization of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the role of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in this multi-agency partnership. NEHRP was created 20 years ago to reduce the loss of life and property from earthquakes. Clearly the Program has been successful. Looking back over time, one can appreciate how the enormous increase in scientific and technical knowledge provided by NEHRP has enabled more effective loss reduction strategies and stimulated mitigation actions. To mention just one example, in the 1970's earthquakes were not generally regarded as a serious threat either in Seattle or Portland in the Pacific Northwest, or in Memphis or St. Louis in the mid-continent. NEHRP changed that perception. Seismic provisions in building codes have been upgraded and adopted; regional consortia have been formed to promote policies and practices to reduce earthquake losses; and local governments, corporations and citizens have initiated actions to reduce their vulnerability to earthquake damage. In spite of such heartening progress, much remains to be done to further safeguard the Nation against earthquakes. The recent tragedies of Northridge and Kobe painfully show that even in quake-conscious California and Japan modern cities remain far too vulnerable to earthquakes. The need to do more presents a challenge to the NEHRP agencies, especially at the present time when budgets of Federal agencies are severely constrained. This situation requires programs to be more creative in finding ways to leverage scarce resources. One way in which the NEHRP agencies are responding to this challenge is through the use of partnerships--partnerships of all types involving a wide variety of agencies and institutions. Partnerships bring dual benefits to NEHRP: leveraging resources and tightening links between researchers and practitioners. Partnerships are proving to be an effective mechanism for speeding the implementation of new knowledge in more effective risk-reduction strategies and for fostering actions by State and local government and the private sector to reduce seismic vulnerability. USGS ROLE IN NEHRP The four NEHRP agencies--Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and USGS--have complementary roles and work closely with one another to coordinate activities and planning. The USGS role in this partnership is to monitor seismic activity, to identify and characterize earthquake hazards, to conduct research in support of improved hazard-assessment methods, to disseminate scientific data and information, and to demonstrate application of earth-science knowledge in effective loss-reduction strategies. The USGS program addresses questions fundamental to all loss-reduction strategies: where and how often will earthquakes occur; how large will they be; and what will be the severity and extent of strong ground shaking, landsliding, and other types of ground failure. The USGS program collaborates with a broad range of agencies, institutions and organizations in all aspects of its program from monitoring and research to the application of earth-science knowledge. In pursuing its NEHRP role, the USGS enlists the talents and expertise of researchers and practitioners from the academic, private, and governmental sectors. The internal and external program components are closely coordinated through use of a common plan to guide program activities. Investigations and activities conducted or supported by the USGS contribute to the reduction of earthquake losses through a broad variety of mechanisms, including land use planning, seismic engineering, earthquake preparedness, and earthquake disaster response. The USGS fact-sheet series, Reducing Earthquake Losses Throughout the United States, highlights a number of these contributions and the partnerships through which they have been implemented. The examples range from increasing awareness of the earthquake threat in the central Mississippi Valley, to motivating governmental and corporate actions to reduce earthquake vulnerability in the San Francisco Bay region, to improving seismic design standards, to speeding disaster relief. I would like to bring you up to date on progress and developments within the USGS part of NEHRP. I will highlight some recent accomplishments, describe promising new partnerships, and discuss the future direction of USGS NEHRP efforts. RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS New Shaking Hazard Maps. One of the recent major USGS accomplishments is a new series of maps for the conterminous United States that depict and quantify how the shaking hazard varies across the country. The maps show the maximum shaking likely to occur over a period of decades and incorporate current knowledge about the rate of earthquake activity across the United States and how the intensity of ground shaking decreases with distance from the earthquake source in various parts of the country. Preparation of these maps involved extensive collaboration with NEHRP researchers, practicing design engineers, and State and local governments across the country. For California, the USGS and the California Division of Mines and Geology jointly developed the geologic data used to calculate the hazard in and around the Golden State. A prime purpose of the hazard maps is to provide the scientific basis for setting seismic design values in building codes. The 1996 maps were used by the Building Seismic Safety Council to establish seismic design values for the 1997 NEHRP Recommended Provisions for the Development of Seismic Regulations for New Buildings. Most of the States east of the Mississippi River base their building codes on either of two model codes, both of which rely on the NEHRP Recommended Provisions. In this way, new construction in most of the Eastern United States incorporates NEHRP assessment of the shaking hazard. The USGS hazard maps are also used by insurance companies to analyze their risk exposure and as a guide in setting premium rates in various parts of the country. The Environmental Protection Agency uses the maps to set construction standards to ensure the safety of waste-disposal facilities, and FEMA uses information from the maps to allocate assistance funds to States for earthquake education and preparedness. The hazard values from the maps are also incorporated into the HAZUS loss-estimation software developed by FEMA with which State and local governments can analyze potential earthquake losses. Northridge, California, Earthquake Investigations. In the weeks after the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake--the most costly earthquake in the United States since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake--the four NEHRP agencies initiated coordinated investigations to learn lessons that could be applied to reducing life loss and property damage in future earthquakes. Last spring, 2 years after the event, the USGS published a report, USGS Response to an Urban Earthquake: Northridge '94, that summarizes lessons and findings from investigations of the earthquake. The report highlights findings related to the origin of the earthquake and its effects including seismic shaking, landslides, other types of ground failure, and damage to buildings and freeways. In addition, it describes how government agencies cooperated in responding to the disaster and in pursuing post-earthquake investigations. The report is available electronically on the World Wide Web (http://geohazards.cr.usgs.gov/northridge/). Beyond this initial Northridge report, the USGS is currently completing detailed scientific reports on its investigations and incorporating information and findings into products that will help to reduce losses from future earthquakes in the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles Basin. For example: • The USGS is compiling digital information, including a map and database, on the locations and rates of activity of faults and folds in the Los Angeles region in consultation with the California Division of Mines and Geology and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). Such information is fundamental to the evaluation of future earthquake potential and assessment of hazard. The digital data are available electronically from the World Wide Web. • From seismic imaging surveys crossing the Los Angeles metropolitan region, scientists from the USGS and the SCEC have developed a more complete understanding of the geology beneath part of the Los Angeles region and how that geology contributes to earthquakes hazards in the region. A critical piece of information to emerge from the seismic imaging is the depth to rock beneath sedimentary basins and near their edges. Because the depth of sedimentary fill profoundly effects the characteristics of strong ground shaking experienced at a basin site, knowledge of basin configuration allows better estimates of the shaking that is likely to occur in future large earthquakes. The seismic surveys also help resolve the configuration of buried thrust faults, like the fault responsible for the Northridge shock. ⚫ The Northridge earthquake caused tens of thousands of landslides over an area of 4,000 square miles. Most of the slides occurred in the sparsely populated mountains north of the Los Angeles metropolitan area; however, slope failures destroyed dozens of homes, blocked roads, disrupted pipe and power lines, and blocked streams within and around the urban region. Using the Northridge data and information on slope steepness and strength of geologic hillside materials, USGS scientists have constructed a digital landslide susceptibility map for the northern Los Angeles urban region that depicts areas where landslides are likely to occur in future earthquakes. The map was prepared in collaboration with State and county geologists and private consulting firms who will be among the principal users of the map in its application to land development and emergency preparedness and response planning. For example, the State is using the map information to define earthquake hazard zones as required by the 1990 California Seismic Hazards Mapping Act. The Northridge earthquake significantly damaged thousands of buildings. Using a detailed inventory of damaged buildings prepared by the California Office of Emergency Services, USGS scientists developed mathematical correlations between damage and shaking that can be used to improve estimates of future earthquake losses. The study revealed that post-1940 multi-family dwellings are more prone to damage than are post-1940 masonry structures or pre-1940 1- to 4-family wood-frame dwellings. Measuring building response. A critical element to reducing fatalities and damage in earthquakes is knowing how buildings, bridges, and dams respond to and are damaged by strong seismic shaking. As part of its National Strong Motion Program, the USGS, in cooperation with numerous Government agencies and private owners, has installed motion sensors in a variety of structures across the Nation to record their complex behaviors in earthquakes. The USGS has instrumented 33 buildings, most of which are in California, where earthquakes are most frequent. One or more buildings also have been instrumented in Alaska, Hawaii, Missouri, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington. |