RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Private homes sought for earthquake monitors
10:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, October 27, 2010
The U.S. Geological Survey is looking for a few good garages.
To improve its ability to map ground movement during an earthquake, officials want to place 35 tackle-box-sized sensors in Southern California homes, including some along the Interstate 15 corridor in the Murrieta/Temecula area. They want homeowners willing to place the sensors in their homes.
The program, called NetQuakes, was started last year in the San Francisco and Seattle areas. Financed by federal stimulus money, 90 Swiss-made GeoSIG units are scattered around the Bay Area. An additional 45 are connected to a network in the Seattle region.
The agency paid just over $4,000 apiece for the 35 sensors it wants to place in Southern California, said Doug Givens, project chief for USGS Southern California earthquake monitoring, speaking from his office at Caltech in Pasadena.
"Our hope is, as we get those out, we'll find additional funding for more," Givens said. Eventually, he would like to have hundreds scattered across Southern California.
The blue units will be tied into a sensor network via the Internet. They have to be bolted to a concrete foundation.
"Their primary purpose isn't to locate or determine the magnitude of earthquakes," he said. "They're really to help us characterize the pattern of ground shaking during damaging earthquakes."
Despite careful modeling, Givens said, geologists can't always determine what areas are going to be most affected by a strong quake. For instance, he said, in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the greatest surface movement took place north of the quake's epicenter and in Santa Monica to the south.
"You can do your best based on what you know about the earthquake source, but it's really best to measure what's going on," he said. The NetQuake sensors will do just that, he added. The USGS plans to place them in regions of Southern California that don't have the same density of sensors as some other areas.
Besides the Murrieta/Temecula area, the sensors will be placed in southern Orange and northern San Diego counties.
Knowing the actual ground movement in the aftermath of a large quake has practical implications, Givens said. Emergency personnel can be sent to the areas where the hardest shaking took place, since that is where the greater damage is likely to be.
The relatively cheap cost of the units, compared to more sophisticated sensors, makes them attractive, as does their sensitivity.
"We can pick up earthquakes that you would not feel," Givens said.
Givens wants to distribute the units soon.
"Depending on the response," he said, "we'll have them all installed by the end of the year."
To learn more about participating in the NetQuake project, visit earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/waveforms/netq/socal.php.
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Want an earthquake sensor in your home?
October 27th, 2010, 11:02 am · posted by Pat Brennan, science, environment editor
Earthquake sensor that the U.S. Geological Survey hopes to install in Southern California homes. Photo courtesy U.S.G.S.
Federal earthquake scientists are calling for volunteers to play host to home-based quake sensors, especially in southern Orange County, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.
The agency is seeking 35 volunteers throughout Southern California. Those who take part will have a shoebox-sized sensor bolted to concrete in their homes; a continuous Internet connection is required so the data can be sent to the research project, called "NetQuakes."
The agency is asking volunteers to sign up online.
"We've got them all in hand now, and we're ready to deploy today," said Doug Given, project chief for the U.S.G.S. in Pasadena.
The idea is to more precisely map the intensity of earthquakes as they happen.
"The main goal of NetQuakes is to measure how hard the ground shakes," Given said. "That helps us right after an earthquake to characterize the pattern of ground shaking. That information can then be used by emergency responders to know where to allocate resources — where the shaking was strongest, where the damage is most likely to be worse, where to send building inspectors, where to send emergency crews."
The agency identified southern Orange County as an area of growing population that needs more sensor coverage, along with north San Diego County, the I-15 corridor and the Temecula and Murrietta areas.
"We'd also like to find any locations that are near critical facilities — airports, dams, hospitals, things like that," Given said. "People who, luckily for us maybe but not luckily for them, are located near earthquake faults may be candidates as well."
The agency will cull through online forms filled out by prospective volunteers, and choose those who best fit their criteria, he said. Stability is a key factor; renters can participate, but only with permission of the property owner.
"One of the things we're after is continuity," he said. "We don't want somebody to install it and move out a year later."
And if the sensor breaks down, there's no need to send a technician back to the home, he said; U.S.G.S. will simply mail volunteers a new machine, and they can mail back the old one.
"It's called NetQuakes because it's supposed to model the idea of Netflix," Given said, although "the initial installation will be done by a U.S.G.S. technician."
NetQuake projects were first launched in the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest, he said.
The agency says the devices will be deployed and installed by the end of 2011, though Given says it will probably be "much sooner than that."
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