BACKGROUND
Strong-motion instrumentation in many of the COSMOS agency strong-motion instrumentation programs are being replaced with recent versions of instrumentation more suited to individual agency needs. The instrumentation being replaced is often in good working order, but no longer meets the requirements of the host agency. Towards extending the useful life of the instrumentation being replaced and no longer used by the host agency, this project, entitled “COSMOS Strong-motion Instrumentation For SAFER Cities” is intended to facilitate the redistribution of these instruments. Recipients of the instruments must be non-profit organizations and agencies that would otherwise have little or no means of recording the next damaging earthquake in urbanized areas of the world. Objectives of the project, responsibilities of the various agencies and organizations, and procedures for redistribution of unused instrumentation follow.

OBJECTIVES
Redistribution of strong-motion instrumentation to non-profit organizations for educational and nonprofit purposes to benefit society by:

• Improving probabilities for acquiring quantitative strong-motion measurements in urbanized areas of the world with little or no means of recording the next damaging earthquake,

• Providing quantitative measurements of ground shaking and the nearby built environment during severe earthquakes in order to better rebuild the society to resist future earthquakes,

• Facilitating and stimulating interest in the acquisition of strong-motion measurements needed to improve earthquake resistant design and construction in urbanized cites with high seismic risk throughout the world.

In 1999, the Government of Armenia proposed an enhanced national program of seismic risk reduction in the urban environment. One of the most important tasks of this program is to reduce the vulnerability of the built environment through reinforcement and upgrading of existing buildings and improvement of earthquake resistant design and construction in urbanized cities with high seismic risk.

To assist this program, the Consortium of Organizations for Strong Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS), in cooperation with the World Seismic Safety Initiative (WSSI) have provided the Armenian Strong Motion Network with 40 SMA-type accelerographs for monitoring the seismic response of buildings and structures located in densely urbanized areas. These instruments, in support of the national program of seismic risk reduction, will allow for the following upgrades to the Armenian Strong Motion Network:

1. Installation of 24 accelerographs at selected sites and buildings in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia and considered to be at the greatest seismic risk, Installation of 16 accelerographs in the city of Kapan, an industrial center located in southern Armenia, which was built on the sharp slope of river canyon with slope ascent more than 15 degrees. The selected sites will be represented by various soil conditions and different structural designs typical for these cities and for Armenia in general.

2. To study behavior of different types of buildings in different soil conditions during the earthquakes with different magnitudes, focal mechanisms, and locations;

3. To study soil- structure interaction for different types of buildings in various soil conditions;

4. To allow earthquake ground motion and response spectra analysis for the recorded earthquakes with M>3; and

5. To allow dynamic response analysis of the selected buildings. Strong-motion instruments will be installed in 5- and 9-story buildings at ground level and upper floors. In 16-storybuildings, instruments will be installed at ground level, the 9 th floor, and upper floors. The record processing procedure will include the analog strong-motion time history digitizing, processing in accordance with Safer Cities Program requirements, and archiving in the database of Armenian Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earths (AASPE). The dissemination policy will include recorded data transmission into the COSMOS website in accordance with Safer Cities Program requirements, and the recordings will be posted on AASPE website for free access and use by the scientific community worldwide.

SAFER CITIES AROUND THE WORLD

BANGLADESH - The objective of this study is to install a seismic network system to record earthquakes, within Bangladesh and its neighboring regions, which have experienced several large earthquakes in the past. The peak ground accelerations of these earthquakes have been estimated using different existing attenuation laws for different parts of the world, however the current research presents an opportunity for development of a specific attentuation law of Bangladesh. [read more]

DALIAN, P. R. CHINA - The earthquake Engineering Research Institute, Dalian University of Technology, completed installation of a set of seismic networks for monitoring the response of structures to earthquake induced strong motions in the Dalian region. The installation of the networks began in 2005, which consist of 40 three-component accelerographs that are installing step-by-step on buildings with different structural characters in campus and the city center. [read more]

IIT KANPUR - The SAFER CITIES project under COSMOS-WSSI has provided 14 strong motion accelerographs (Kinemetrics SMA-1’s) to IIT Kanpur for installation at different engineering college across the country. [read more]