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Announcements

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2016 Dues

It's that time of year again. You may pay your dues either by PayPal (see below) or by remitting a check made payable to COSMOS and mailed to the COSMOS office: Rm 121, Bldg, 454, 1301 S. 46th Street, c/o PEER, University of California, Richmond, CA 94804.

To keep our records current, we'd appreciate it if you would fill out the membership information card HERE, and email it back to the COSMOS office: cosmos@berkeley.edu. Thank you.

  • Individual Members: $50.00

2016 DUES

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NEW!!!!

COSMOS CONVERTER TOOL

COSMOS recently funded efforts to improve the versatility and outputs of the Converter Tool that was originally developed at U.C. Santa Barbara in 2006. The current version of the Java-based application (beta mode) can input strong-motion records in the formats of four major seismic networks and COSMOS, split the record into single-channels if necessary, and then generate output files converted to a user-selected format. For more detailed information on the new took, please visit the VDC page. The tool can be downloaded from the CESMD website HERE

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NEW!!!!

COSMOS RELEASES DRAFTS OF TWO NEW GUIDELINES

COSMOS has just released drafts of two new guidelines. The first is the "Guideline for Inundation Protection of Strong-Motion Instrumentation" (available HERE). The second is a draft of the "Guideline and General Considerations for Strong-Motion Instrumentation of Tall Buildings" (available HERE).

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NEW!!!!

UPDATE ON SITE CHARACTERIZATION PROJECT

COSMOS Directors Alan Yong, Jamison Steidl, and Robert Nigbor organized an informal forum held on 24 April 2015 at Caltech. The purpose of the forum was to facilitate the exchange of information about seismic site response and the development of guidelines for characterizing site conditions in Europe, as presented by Pierre-Yves Bard and Cécile Cornou on 23 April at the Seismological Society of America (SSA) Meeting in Pasadena. Over 40 participants, consisting of representatives from industry and governmental and academic institutions in the U.S. and from abroad, attended the 24 April forum. Invited presentations by U.S. and European scientists and engineers about the state-of-knowledge in site response and non-invasive geophysical site characterization techniques led to discussions that ranged from generalities to nuances of the accuracy and precision of the techniques presented, and, in particular, about how these techniques were/are applied by practitioners. Concerns about the quality of the results produced by practitioners became the dominant topic, and the attendees decided that a committee should be established to facilitate the development of guidelines, or best practices, for characterizing site conditions when applying non-invasive techniques. The attendees asked Yong to serve as chair of the steering (facilitation) committee; they also suggested that committee members should include the other co-organizers (Steidl and Nigbor) and the presenters of the forum. More information is available HERE.

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Roger D. Borcherdt Awarded the 2016 Bruce A. Bolt Medal

Roger D. Borcherdt, scientist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey and past Shimizu Visiting Professor and consulting professor at Stanford University, is the 2016 recipient of the Bruce A. Bolt Medal. The annual award is presented jointly by the Consortium of Strong Motion Observations Systems (COSMOS), Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), and the Seismological Society of America (SSA). The Medal recognizes individuals worldwide whose accomplishments involve the promotion and use of strong-motion earthquake data and whose leadership in the transfer of scientific and engineering knowledge into practice or policy has led to improved seismic safety.

Dr. Borcherdt's career is marked with "exceptional scientific contributions in the fields of seismology and engineering seismology, extraordinarily broad in scope," as noted on the Presidential Distinguished Service Award he received in 2010 as the highest honor of the U.S. Department of Interior. His contributions, evident in 200 publications, include pioneering site-response studies resulting in Vs30 site-response characterization procedures adopted worldwide in building codes and seismic-hazard mitigation maps; theoretical solutions of fundamental wave propagation problems in seismology that extend the mathematical framework for seismology to all linear anelastic media as presented in his graduate-level textbook, Viscoelastic Waves in Layered Media; "scientific leadership in engineering seismology," as noted on his U.S. Department of Interior Meritorious Service Award (1993); and participation on several building code committees and advisory panels.

Borcherdt is a foremost authority on use of strong-motion data to characterize site response for use in building codes and seismic hazard evaluations. His initial pioneering work provided the first compelling evidence of site resonances on soft soils in the U.S., as published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America in 1970. Subsequent comparative strong ground-motion and shear-wave velocity measurement studies in the San Francisco and Los Angeles regions under his leadership led to his introduction of the now-famous "Vs30" as a metric to distinguish site response characteristics of near-surface geologic deposits. His seminal paper on "Estimates of Site-Specific Response Spectra for Use in Earthquake Resistant Design," for which he received an "utstanding Paper Award" from Earthquake Spectra in 1994 provided the initial Vs30 definitions of site classes and corresponding strong-motion site coefficients that were adopted in consultation with many colleagues and applied to building codes that continue to be used throughout the world.

Borcherdt's 2009 graduate textbook Viscoelastic Waves in Layered Media provides general mathematical solutions for fundamental wave propagation problems in seismology that are valid for any layered media with a linear response, elastic or anelastic, regardless of the amount of intrinsic material absorption. These more general solutions, derived by the author, reveal new physical characteristics of P-and S-body waves and Rayleigh- and Love-Type surface waves in multi-layered anelastic earth models not predicted by previous theory. These more general solutions were termed at a recent workshop as a stepping stone to a new era in seismology, not only because they explain changes in amplitude, wave speed, and particle-motion characteristics along seismic ray paths that were previously unexplained, but also because they provide exact closed-form theoretical solutions for wave-propagation problems in an infinite number of types of anelastic media. The general solutions provide the basis to improve anelastic wave prediction and inversion models for a variety of problems in engineering, seismology, exploration geophysics, and solid mechanics.

Borcherdt's leadership as chief of various USGS projects and branches at the federal NSF-USGS National Strong-Motion Program resulted in the following accomplishments::

  • His coordination of the first USGS multidisciplinary seismic zonation effort (MF-709), resulting in maps used extensively in required California City and County Seismic Safety Elements and as prototypes for maps required by California Seismic Hazard Mapping Law AB-3897
  • His design with colleagues of the first microprocessor controlled wide-dynamic range (180dB) digital strong-motion recording system (GEOS, patent #4,603,486), as a prototype for commercial instrumentation
  • Numerous (>30) portable GEOS strong-motion aftershock studies in the U.S., Mexico, Chili, Canada, Armenia, South Africa, and Turkey, yielding new insights on earthquake-source, crustal-structure, and site-response characteristics
  • Installation of several permanent strong-motion arrays throughout the U.S., including integrated borehole soil-response arrays in San Francisco and the notable Parkfield, California, GEOS array with its unprecedented high resolution recordings of the 2004 M6 earthquake showing no discernible near-field precursory strain or displacement at sensitivities of 10-11 strain and 5x10-8 meters.

Borcherdt is an honorary member of EERI and has served as editor of Earthquake Spectra, EERI Vice President, and Honors Committee Chair. He is an active member of SSA and charter founding member of COSMOS. He currently chairs the Engineering Criteria Review Board for the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission and is a past member of several advisory committees, including Federal Emergency Management Agency's Working Group for Development of HAZUS, its Provision Update Committee for NEHRP Recommended Building Code Provisions, and its ATC-58 committee for development of provisions to include advancements in performance based design.

Borcherdt received his BA (1963) and MA (1965) degrees in theoretical mathematics from Universities of Colorado and Wisconsin, and M.S. (1970) and Ph.D. (1971) degrees in engineering geoscience from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Borcherdt will receive his award at the SSA Annual Meeting on 20-22 April 2016 in Reno, Nevada.

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COSMOS is a non-profit organization whose goal is to expand and significantly modernize the acquisition and application of strong-motion data in order to increase public safety from earthquakes.
 

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