Updates to the U.S. Geological Survey National Strong Motion Project Acquisition, Processing, and Review System

Abstract:

Measurements of earthquake strong ground motions and structural responses are essential for mitigating the loss of life and property from future earthquakes. These data improve our ability to assess structure health following significant and potentially damaging earthquakes, and to design earthquake-resilient infrastructure. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Strong Motion Project (NSMP) currently operates ~670 strong-motion accelerometers, which include 94 structural arrays in the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. The NSMP routinely collects and processes waveform data to support both the structural engineering and seismic hazard communities. These data are publicly available at the Center for Engineering Strong Motion Data (CESMD) at https://strongmotioncenter.org. Here we provide an overview of updates to the NSMP strong-motion acquisition, processing, and review system, including improvements to the Processing and Review Interface for Strong Motion data (PRISM) software and Advanced National Seismic System Quake Monitoring System (AQMS). Our new review and processing workflow significantly improves quality assurance of strong-motion accelerometer data and metadata, allowing an increased amount of waveform data to be quickly made available to users. Recent datasets of waveforms and spectra include the January 7, 2020, Mw 6.4 Puerto Rico earthquake; the March 18, 2020, Mw 5.7 earthquake north of Magna, UT, near Salt Lake City; the March 31, 2020, Mw 6.5 earthquake, near Challis, ID; the May 15, 2020, Mw 6.5 earthquake that occurred northwest of Tonopah, NV, in the Monte Cristo Range; and the June 24, 2020, Mw 5.8 Lone Pine, CA, earthquake. These records include near-source ground motions from the Puerto Rico and Magna event – some greater than 0.5 g, near-source ground motions at stations within 10 km of the Magna and Lone Pine events, and over 500 records from 38 structures that experienced one of these events. Records from the larger aftershocks from these sequences that include data from near-source portable stations are also available. These datasets offer new information for improving our ability to understand ground motions in different tectonic regions, and opportunities for analyzing the structural response of key engineered infrastructure components.