Report of the Southern California Earthquake Data Center
Advisory Committee
Our committee was organized in August 2003, with the mandate to meet and provide a short but wide-ranging report on the direction of the SCEDC by the end of September 2003. Our committee attended the town hall meeting organized by the SCEDC on September 7 in Oxnard just prior to the 2003 Annual SCEC meeting. Following the town hall meeting, we talked with the SCEDC staff, then met with just the five committee members present.
Attached is the self-report of the SCEDC. We endorse the self-report as accurate and thorough, and report the feedback from the community we heard and our recommendations below. One of us (TA), as manager of the IRIS Data Center, did not offer suggestions on issues related to seeking funding to support EarthScope-related costs.
The SCEDC is an efficient and well-run operation with a small, dedicated staff. It is an integral part of SCEC and Southern California earthquake science. If it were only to maintain the status quo, the current funding level is marginal. However, there can be no broadening of its scope without an increase in funding. Our charge is to address the question of how the SCEDC can meet its current responsibilities and still respond to higher expectations from the scientific community.
As the SCEDC increases the number of input channels, the SCEDC must make decisions about its responsibility to the science it supports and to the financial impact commensurate with the increase in the number of channels. If we assume that the SCEDC funding is in equilibrium (perhaps unstable) with its current responsibilities, any new responsibilities that it accepts must come with additional funding. One difficulty with this paradigm is that new workload may not require a full-time person. The number of persons working is quantized, while the increased workload is not.
With these facts and observations in mind, we offer the following recommendations for SCECDC:
1. If SCEC is contributing to the increasing workload of the SCEDC, it should provide funding to support that increase.
2. One approach to increase funding for the SCECDC is to endorse an IRIS-like proposal to NSF for the necessary resources. A proposal to NSF would likely require a strong endorsement from the SCEC Board of Directors for favorable consideration. So some reconnaissance of the attitudes of the SCEC Board of Directors and NSF Program Directors will better define a constructive approach.
3. The SCECDC should document the extent of its services and the amount of research that has used or cited its data. Some have the perception that the work of the SCEDC is not central to future research. The data we saw and our discussions with the staff and with SCEC researchers are contrary to this perception. SCECDC should collect better data on usage and should publish usage statistics on a regular basis. In addition to collection of query statistics, possible approaches include compilation of a list of research achievements or collection of endorsements from a geographically distributed set of seismologists, particularly those who are not a part of SCEC. Involvement of specialists from all the relevant fields of expertise in reviewing SCEDC achievements may be helpful.
4. Specific tasks in the short-term include finishing the archiving of the 1977-1980 data and completing the station database, in particular the station responses. Some preparation for the Big Foot component of EarthScope will be necessary. The question that must be answered, is who will pay for this extra load that is put upon the SCEDC? EarthScope is going to benefit tremendously in its initial stages by taking advantage of established broadband seismic networks in both southern and northern California and the science that they enable through the earthquake data centers. The committee believes that it is reasonable that funds for the added load be solicited from the EarthScope program.
5. Possible innovations include archiving differential time measurements, focal mechanisms, automatic cross-correlation relocations, source spectra, path attenuation spectra, and the associated estimated errors. Automatically updating structural models and inclusion of distribution of stress may also be possible. Such added features would strengthen the arguments for the full support and enable the data center to take full advantage of recent progress in earthquake seismology. Under the status quo of limited funding, however, it is difficult to contemplate such improvements.
6. It would be helpful to document the breadth of the uses to which SCEDC is applied and to further broaden the user base. This should be possible because the SCEDC provides some of the most complete and accurate seismological information in the world. Perhaps more SCEC-funded projects involving nationally distributed seismologists would accomplish this aim.
7. The funding for the SCEDC and the associated seismic network is complicated, with SCEC, CISN, Caltech, and the USGS contributing. However, it is clear that the SCEDC is efficient, and should not be strangled as a by-product of attempts to off-load expenses to other potential funding sources.
8. We considered and rejected a model that raises funds by charging seismologists for access. This would inhibit creative exploration of the data that might lead to new discoveries.
9. The extent to which structural response data from buildings or other structures should be added to the list of stations archived is not clear. Some felt it would only be appropriate if money were added to the budget to pay the ongoing costs. Others thought exciting science and hazard mitigation applications would result from such collections. It may be appropriate that the scientific arguments for such archiving efforts and estimates of ongoing costs should be more carefully examined, particularly as the earthquake engineering community moves towards large-scale, real-time monitoring of structures.
Due to stringent time constraints, this list of comments necessarily only touches the most salient issues.
John Vidale, Chair
Tim Ahern,
Ralph Archuleta
Greg Beroza, and
Robert Nigbor
