[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
.
A REVIEW OF THE NATIONAL EARTHQUAKE
HAZARDS REDUCTION PROGRAM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 29, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-88
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
DANA ROHRABACHER, California EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
RALPH M. HALL, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
Wisconsin DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia DAN MAFFEI, New York
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SCOTT PETERS, California
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana DEREK KILMER, Washington
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming MARC VEASEY, Texas
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona JULIA BROWNLEY, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ROBIN KELLY, Illinois
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota KATHERINE CLARK, Massachusetts
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
RANDY WEBER, Texas
CHRIS COLLINS, New York
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
------
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
HON. LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana, Chair
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
MO BROOKS, Alabama FEDERICA WILSON, Florida
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois ZOE LOFGREN, California
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas SCOTT PETERS, California
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming AMI BERA, California
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona DEREK KILMER, Washington
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma ROBIN KELLY, Illinois
CHRIS COLLINS, New York EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
(II)
C O N T E N T S
July 29, 2014
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Larry Bucshon, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Research and Technology, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Scott Peters, Subcommittee on
Research and Technology, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 10
Written Statement............................................ 12
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 14
Written Statement............................................ 16
Witnesses:
Panel I
Dr. John R. Hayes, Jr., Director, National Earthquake Hazards
Reduction Program, National Institute of Standards and
Technology
Oral Statement............................................... 18
Submitted Biography.......................................... 21
Dr. Pramod P. Khargonekar, Assistant Director, Directorate of
Engineering, National Science Foundation
Oral Statement............................................... 38
Written Statement............................................ 40
Dr. David Applegate, Associate Director for Natural Hazards, U.S.
Geological Survey
Oral Statement............................................... 48
Written Statement............................................ 50
Mr. Roy E. Wright, Deputy Associate Administrator for Mitigation,
Federal Emergency Management Agency
Oral Statement............................................... 58
Written Statement............................................ 60
Panel II
Dr. Julio A. Ramirez, Professor of Civil Engineering, NEES Chief
Officer and NEEScomm Center Director, George E. Brown Jr.,
Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), Purdue
University
Oral Statement............................................... 84
Submitted Biography.......................................... 86
Dr. William U. Savage, Consulting Seismologist, William Savage
Consulting, LLC
Oral Statement............................................... 98
Written Statement............................................ 100
Mr. Jonathon Monken, Director and Homeland Security Advisor,
Illinois Emergency Management Agency
Oral Statement............................................... 107
Written Statement............................................ 109
Dr. Andrew S. Whittaker, Professor and Chair, Director MCEER;
Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering,
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Oral Statement............................................... 115
Written Statement............................................ 117
Discussion....................................................... 57
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Pramod P. Khargonekar, Assistant Director, Directorate of
Engineering, National Science Foundation....................... 134
Mr. Roy E. Wright, Deputy Associate Administrator for Mitigation,
Federal Emergency Management Agency............................ 144
Dr. Julio A. Ramirez, Professor of Civil Engineering, NEES Chief
Officer and NEEScomm Center Director, George E. Brown Jr.,
Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), Purdue
University..................................................... 149
Dr. William U. Savage, Consulting Seismologist, William Savage
Consulting, LLC................................................ 152
Mr. Jonathon Monken, Director and Homeland Security Advisor,
Illinois Emergency Management Agency........................... 154
Dr. Andrew S. Whittaker, Professor and Chair, Director MCEER;
Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering,
University at Buffalo, State University of New York............ 156
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Statement submitted by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Ranking
Minority Member, Subcommittee on Research and Technology,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 160
Letters submitted by Representative Larry Bucshon, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 162
Letter submitted by Mr. Jay Berger, Executive Director,
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute...................... 166
A REVIEW OF THE NATIONAL EARTHQUAKE
HAZARDS REDUCTION PROGRAM
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TUESDAY, JULY 29, 2014
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Larry
Bucshon [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
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Chairman Bucshon. Good morning. The Subcommittee on
Research and Technology will come to order.
Welcome to today's hearing entitled ``A Review of the
National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.'' In front of
you are packets containing the written testimony, biographies,
and truth-in-testimony disclosures for today's witnesses. I
recognize myself for five minutes now for an opening statement.
Earthquakes present a potential hazard to every State in
our Nation. The U.S. Geological Survey recently updated its
National Seismic Hazards Maps with research identifying that in
the next 50 years, 42 of our 50 states have a chance of
experiencing damaging ground shaking from an earthquake. There
are 16 States in the United States that have a high likelihood
of experiencing damage because they have sustained earthquakes
with a seismic magnitude of 6 or greater. My home State of
Indiana is at risk of experiencing the effects of earthquakes
stemming from the New Madrid fault.
Earthquakes are unique among natural hazards because they
strike without warning. The cascading nature of an earthquake
can induce secondary effects such as landslides, liquefaction,
and tsunamis. Earthquakes impact people and communities
worldwide from the devastation of loss of life and property to
the turmoil caused by the disruption of important services,
including water, electricity, and other utilities or lifelines
including roads and bridges.
In 1977 the Congress passed the Earthquake Hazards
Reduction Act establishing the National Earthquake Hazards
Production Program, or NEHRP, as a long-term earthquake risk-
reduction program for the United States. Four federal agencies
contribute to NEHRP research and activities: the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Science
Foundation, the United States Geological Survey, and the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. Program activities are
focused on supporting the development of earthquake hazard
reduction measures, promoting the adoption of these measures by
federal, state, and local governments, improving the
understanding of earthquakes and their effects on people and
infrastructure, and developing and maintaining the Advanced
National Seismic System, the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES, and the Global
Seismic Network.
In Indiana, Purdue University leads the collaborative
George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering
Simulation, or NEES. The mission of NEES is ``to accelerate
improvements in seismic design and performance by serving as an
indispensable collaboratory for discovery and innovation.''
Support for research and activities that strengthen
preparedness for, reduce the impact of, and aid in recovery
from earthquakes will fortify the Nation's ability to respond
to earthquake hazards.
Today's hearing is a bipartisan effort to learn about NEHRP
and understand the Nation's level of earthquake preparedness.
We worked across the aisle to bring together two panels of
experts who can shed light on these important issues. I look
forward to hearing from all the witnesses on both of our panels
to understand the work of the NEHRP agencies and how that work
intersects with engineers, emergency managers, and lifeline
experts.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bucshon follows:]
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Chairman Bucshon. At this point I ask unanimous consent to
put two letters in the record regarding the NEHRP program: a
letter from the American Society of Civil Engineers and a
letter from the BuildStrong Coalition. Without objection, so
ordered.
[The information appears in Appendix II:]
Chairman Bucshon. At this point I now recognize the
gentleman from California, Mr. Peters, for an opening
statement.
Mr. Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding
this hearing today on the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction
Program, or NEHRP, an unfortunate acronym for an important
program. I want to thank witnesses on both panels for being
here today.
Though infrequent, earthquakes are unique among natural
hazards in that they strike without warning. While areas like
my home State of California, in addition to Oregon, Washington,
and Alaska, are the most well-known for earthquakes,
earthquakes are not a hazard confined to the West Coast. A 2011
earthquake here in Washington, D.C., caused over $200 million
in damages, including damage to the Washington Monument and the
Smithsonian, and it is estimated that 75 million Americans in
39 States are exposed to significant seismic risk and nearly
all states in the United States have some level of risk.
In an effort to mitigate the harmful impacts and better
prepare for future earthquakes, Congress authorized the
National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, an interagency
program that includes the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, the National Science Foundation, Federal Emergency
Management Agency, and the United States Geological Survey.
Since NEHRP was founded in 1977, we have learned a lot
about how to prepare for, mitigate, and respond to a large-
scale earthquake. Research programs, including ones at the
University of California San Diego and San Diego State
University, are underway to help us better understand
earthquakes, develop safer building construction standards, and
ensure that affected communities can respond to and recover
from earthquakes as quickly as possible. But more work is
needed.
I am pleased we have representatives today from all four
agencies here to testify about their activities to reduce the
risks of life and property from earthquakes in the United
States. I am also pleased that we will hear from outside
stakeholders, both private sector and academic, about how the
program is working and what if any changes are needed to
improve its effectiveness.
As my colleagues may know, the reauthorization of these
risk-reduction programs is long overdue. The authorization for
this program expired in 2009. Interagency programs like these
improve our understanding of earthquakes and then turn that
knowledge into mitigation and outreach activities that will
save lives and reduce economic damages. While we can't prevent
natural disasters, we can do more to lessen the cost to human
life and property.
Over the last two years the federal government has spent
more than $136 billion, much of it off-budget, on relief for
hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, wildfires, and other extreme
weather events. It is time that the government stops working in
a reactive way to natural disasters and instead gets to work
efficiently to get ahead of the issue and help States and
localities find the best steps to prepare, plan for, and
recover more quickly from these events.
We know that for every $1 spent now in resiliency we can
avoid at least $4 in future losses. It makes more sense to
approach this by thinking how we can make our communities
better prepared. If we are focused on reducing spending, let's
do it in a way that saves us in the long run.
Mr. Chairman, our goals are the same: to decrease the
vulnerability of communities across the country including mine
in San Diego. I look forward to working with my colleagues on
both sides of the aisle on a bipartisan bill that would
reauthorize the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program
and welcome any comments from the witnesses about changes and
updates that should be made to the authorization language.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding the hearing. I look
toward to hearing the testimony, and I yield back the balance
of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Peters follows:]
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Chairman Bucshon. Thank you, Mr. Peters. I now recognize
the Ranking Member of the full Committee for a statement, Ms.
Johnson.
Ms. Johnson of Texas. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
for holding this important hearing on the National Earthquake
Hazards Reduction Program, or NEHRP. I also want to thank the
Chairman of the full committee, Mr. Smith, for agreeing to this
hearing. Chairman Smith agreed to hold a hearing on NEHRP and
work on the NEHRP reauthorization bill while we were discussing
the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program. This hearing
is a good first step in fulfilling that agreement. I want to
thank the Chairman and majority staff for working with my staff
on putting together this hearing.
Though infrequent, earthquakes are unique among natural
hazards in that they strike with little or no warning. In 1964
Alaska was hit with a great earthquake that measured 9.2 in
magnitude. That was the second-strongest earthquake in recorded
history and resulted in significant damage from both the
earthquake itself and the tsunamis that followed.
California has numerous active faults that have produced
large earthquakes in the last two decades, from 1971, the San
Fernando earthquake to the 1989 Loma Prieta and the 1994
Northridge earthquakes. In fact, NEHRP was established in
Congress in response to the 1964 Alaska and the 1971 San
Fernando earthquakes.
Since its creation, NEHRP has accomplished a great deal. It
has improved our understanding of earthquake processes,
improved our earthquake hazard and risk assessments, improved
earthquake safety for new and existing buildings, and increased
public awareness of earthquake risk and mitigation techniques.
But more work is still needed, including improving the
earthquake resilience of communities nationwide and developing
cost-effective measures to reduce earthquake impacts on
individuals, the built environment, and society.
To ensure that this work is accomplished, we need to
reauthorize NEHRP, which has not had Congressional
authorization since 2009. That is why I am a cosponsor of H.R.
2132, the Natural Hazards Risk Reduction Act of 2013, which was
introduced by Representative Wilson last May. H.R. 2132 would
reauthorize NEHRP program, as well as the National Windstorm
Impact Reduction Program, and would make changes to the Fire
Research Program. This legislation is modeled after bipartisan
legislation that passed the House by an overwhelming margin in
the 111th Congress. And I am pleased that the windstorm program
is reauthorized in a separate bill, H.R. 1786, that was
introduced by Representative Neugebauer, and I supported that
bill when it passed the House earlier this month.
However, I do believe we need to take a multi-hazards
approach to disaster mitigation. Taking a multi-hazards
approach could create opportunities for synergy among the
various research and mitigation activities. Further, a multi-
hazard approach could help achieve the goal of producing
communities that are resilient to any and all disasters. I hope
that as we work on a NEHRP reauthorization bill we look for
opportunities to create synergies and coordination across the
hazards program.
I want to thank the witnesses from both panels for being
here today, and it is important to hear from you as we consider
reauthorizing this important program. I look forward to your
testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
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Chairman Bucshon. Thank you. Just as a sideline, I have
been in three earthquakes myself: one in Southern California in
the late '80s; one in Illinois, southern Illinois when I was a
kid; and one in Evansville, Indiana, in about 2001. So it is a
fairly--if you have never been in an earthquake, it is a fairly
unique experience.
At this point if there are Members who wish to submit
additional opening statements, your statements will be added to
the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lipinski appears in Appendix
II:]
Chairman Bucshon. At this time I would like to introduce
our first panel of witnesses. Our first witness today is Dr.
John Hayes, Jr. Dr. Hayes is the Director of the National
Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program of the Engineering
Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology.
Our next witness is Dr. Pramod--I said this before and now
I will get it correct--Khargonekar is the Assistant Director
for the Directorate of Engineering at the National Science
Foundation. Welcome.
Our third witness is Dr. David Applegate. Dr. Applegate is
the Associate Director for Natural Hazards at the U.S.
Geological Survey.
And our final witness on the first panel is Mr. Roy Wright.
Mr. Wright serves as the Federal Emergency Management Agency's
Deputy Associate Administrator for Mitigation.
As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited
to five minutes each. I now recognize Dr. Hayes for five
minutes to present his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN R. HAYES, JR., DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS REDUCTION PROGRAM,
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY
Dr. Hayes. Chairman Bucshon, Congressman Peters, and other
Members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
testify as you review the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction
Program, or NEHRP, for possible reauthorization.
Mr. Peters, I can assure you that the acronym NEHRP grows
on you after a while so it works.
In your invitation to me you asked me to address several
topics and I will try to address each one of those briefly in
my testimony this morning.
NIST fulfills two broad roles within NEHRP. First, NIST
performs statutory lead agency duties, including supporting an
Interagency Coordinating Committee and the Advisory Committee
on Earthquake Hazard Reduction, drafting and updating NEHRP's
strategic plans, submitting annual NEHRP reports to Congress,
and fostering interagency coordination and cooperation.
Second, NIST performs applied research related to
earthquake engineering, including developing performance-based
design tools, guidelines, and standards for practitioners who
design buildings to resist earthquake effects.
A 2003 applied Technology Council report identified a major
earthquake engineering technology gap between performing basic
research and developing earthquake-related provisions for
national model building codes and standards. NIST bridges this
gap with its Applied Earthquake Engineering Research Program.
In 2008 the NEHRP agencies produced a NEHRP strategic plan
which guides NIST's way forward. The National Research Council,
or NRC, developed a 20-year action plan for improving U.S.
earthquake resilience, and in the process endorsed the NEHRP
strategic plan. The Building Seismic Safety Council, or BSSC,
formulated recommendations for applied research that point NIST
toward addressing the broad research directions that were set
by the NRC plan.
NIST research projects address issues identified by leading
earthquake engineering practitioners and researchers, as well
as the work that was suggested by BSSC in its plan. NIST's
research includes significant interactions with the NEHRP
partners and continuous engagement with other leading
earthquake researchers and practitioners. Alongside FEMA and
USGS, NIST participates in the technical committees that
develop new building codes and standards. This provides direct
access to practicing engineers' needs and facilitates the
effective transfer of new knowledge gained through NIST's
research back to the practitioners.
NIST's work is subdivided into program elements that
includes seismic design technical briefs, codes and standards
support projects, structural and geotechnical engineering-
related projects, and planning projects that support both NIST
and NEHRP-wide activities. Since 2008 NIST has produced
approximately 30 reports on these topics that are in widespread
use by practitioners and researchers alike. Webinars have also
been developed to inform practitioners in the United States and
around the world about these tech briefs.
Coordination among the NEHRP agencies fosters synergies
that complement agency capabilities. FEMA and USGS work closely
on earthquake hazards definitions, hazard mapping, and
earthquake monitoring. NIST and FEMA work closely in fulfilling
the respective roles for engineering research and
implementation and NIST has formed a very special partnership
that involves frequent exchanges of project information and in
some instances direct collaboration on critical projects. FEMA,
USGS, and NIST work closely with NSF-supported researchers to
ensure effective transfer of basic research knowledge into
NIST's research programs.
In closing, I note that NEHRP was created to address the
reality that earthquakes are inevitable and occur without
warning. NIST has done much to minimize their consequences but
much more needs to be done. The NEHRP agencies translate NIST's
research results into actions to ensure that Americans are less
threatened by the effects of devastating earthquakes. The NEHRP
agencies fulfill unique but complementary roles in a
partnership not duplicated elsewhere.
It is also important that I note that the NEHRP family
extends well beyond the four NEHRP program agencies to other
federal agencies, state and local governments, nongovernmental
professional organizations, model building codes and standard
organizations, and earthquake professionals both in the private
sector and academia. Without these dedicated professionals, the
NEHRP agencies could not satisfy the statutory
responsibilities.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify this
morning. This concludes my remarks and I am happy to answer any
questions that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hayes follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you, Dr. Hayes.
I now recognize Dr. Khargonekar for his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. PRAMOD P. KHARGONEKAR,
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
DIRECTORATE OF ENGINEERING,
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Dr. Khargonekar. Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski,
and other distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, it is my
pleasure to be able to testify before you today on the topic of
National Science Foundation's activities in earthquake hazards
reduction. I am Pramod Khargonekar, Assistant Director for
Engineering at NSF.
Since the start of NEHRP, NSF has supported a broad range
of fundamental research in geosciences, engineering, and social
sciences relevant to the understanding of the causes and
impacts of earthquakes. The Foundation also provides support
for education of new scientists and engineers, the integration
of research and education, and outreach to professionals and
the public. Today, I would very briefly like to outline NSF's
NEHRP efforts related to facilities, research, and
coordination.
NSF funds three distributed multiuser national facilities
that support critical fundamental research relevant to NEHRP.
The George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering
Simulation, or NEES, the Geodesy Advancing Geosciences and
EarthScope, or GAGE, and the Seismological Facilities for the
Advancement of Geoscience and EarthScope, or SAGE.
NEES currently provides access to 14 earthquake simulation
experimental facilities located in eight States. The NEES
facilities include shake tables, large-scale labs, geotechnical
centrifuges, field testing equipment, and a tsunami wave basin.
NEES operations are currently supported through an award to
Purdue University covering the fiscal years 2010 to 2014.
Following 2014, NSF has updated its strategy for the future of
NEES operations, which will include NSF support for multiple
NEES awards managed under a single program. This strategy
maintains the NSF commitment earthquake research and
infrastructure while aligning it more strategically under a
multi-hazards approach.
The GAGE and SAGE facilities provide key data,
instrumentation, and educational information and basic research
and education in the Earth sciences. Of particular relevance to
NEHRP, SAGE supports the Global Seismographic Network, GSN, a
worldwide array of 153 permanent seismic stations funded by NSF
and USGS with additional support from the Departments of
Energy, State, and Defense.
Complementing these facilities, NSF funds a wide range of
fundamental research into the processes that drive and control
earthquakes and into the impacts of earthquakes on the built
environment. This includes individual investigative grants,
research centers, and a variety of research collaborations.
NSF also supports rapid response activities to gather data
from disaster sites using its RAPID funding mechanism. In the
response to recent earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, NSF
supported over 30 RAPID awards.
Another research effort conducted in partnership by NSF and
USGS is EarthScope, an Earth science program to explore the
structure of North America and provide a framework of broad
integrated studies. Scientists using EarthScope data are
developing a comprehensive understanding of the structure,
dynamics, and evolution of North America.
NSF supports multiagency collaboration on NEHRP activities
through a variety of matters. In addition to research
collaboration, NSF actively contributes to the NEHRP Program
Coordination Working Group and the Interagency Coordinating
Committee.
Finally, NSF staff regularly briefs the NEHRP Advisory
Committee for earthquake hazards reduction and responds to
recommendations for NSF.
In closing, I would like to leave you with two quick
examples of some recent achievements of NSF-funded grantees.
NSF-funded researchers have discovered how to make underground
water lines that bend and move rather than snap and rupture in
an earthquake. The Cornell team found that medium and high
density polyethylene pipelines remain intact even when the
Earth liquefies and shifts. The City of Los Angeles is now
installing these pipelines the in Elizabeth Tunnel, which
provides half the city's water supply.
The second example concerns ports. In 2005 NSF supported a
research project led by Georgia Tech which examined the seismic
vulnerability of ports. Project researchers found that a
majority of the ports located in the areas of high seismic risk
had either no or only informal seismic risk mitigation plans.
Utilizing unique NEES facilities, the project team developed a
new approach for assessing and managing seismic risk in
container ports.
Mr. Chairman, NEHRP is a strong and dynamic program at NSF
and we hope to continue to support research, education, and
facilities to mitigate the impacts of earthquake hazards. I
thank the Subcommittee for considering priorities for
reauthorization of the program and appreciate the opportunity
to testify today. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Khargonekar follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
I now recognize Dr. Applegate for his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. DAVID APPLEGATE,
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR NATURAL HAZARDS,
U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Dr. Applegate. Great. Well, thank you, Chairman Bucshon and
Congressman Lipinski, other Members of the Subcommittee. I very
much appreciate the invitation for the U.S. Geological Survey
to testify at this hearing.
The USGS is proud to be part of the NEHRP four-agency
partnership effort. I think it has been highly successful and
continues to make valuable contributions to the Nation's
resilience to earthquakes.
As Jack Hayes noted, NEHRP is predicated on the recognition
that while earthquakes are inevitable, their consequences are
not and there is much that we can do as a nation to improve
public safety when it comes to earthquakes and related hazards.
Within NEHRP, each agency performs a distinct and complementary
role essential for the overall success of the program. The
heart of this partnership is a broadly shared commitment to
translate research results into implementation actions that can
reduce earthquake losses. That commitment involves
collaboration that goes well beyond the four NEHRP agencies to
include other federal partners, plus state, tribal, and local
governments, universities, nongovernmental organizations, and
the private sector, as reflected in the second panel.
Carrying out its role within NEHRP, the USGS strives to
deliver the data and information tools that engineers and
design professionals, emergency managers, government officials,
and the public need to prevent earthquake hazards from becoming
earthquake disasters. With its partners, the USGS provides
rapid and authoritative information on earthquake size and
location, shaking intensity, and potential impacts. We develop
hazard assessment maps and related products, we support
targeted research to improve our monitoring and assessment
capabilities, and we build public awareness of earthquake
hazards.
When damaging earthquakes strike here in the United States
or around the world, the USGS delivers a broad suite of
information tools that are made possible by our Advanced
National Seismic System and the worldwide coverage of the
Global Seismographic Network, which is a program involving
USGS, the National Science Foundation, and the Incorporated
Research Institutions for Seismology.
The ANSS consists of a national backbone network, regional
networks that are operated by state and university partners,
the USGS National Earthquake Information Center, and ground and
structure-based instruments concentrated in high-hazard urban
areas. With funding from Congress since 2000, USGS and its
partners have installed more than 2,800 new and upgraded
stations out of a total of 7,100 that are targeted in the ANSS
plan for full implementation of the system. Investments in ANSS
have greatly improved the information available for emergency
responders, engineering performance studies, and long-term
earthquake hazard assessments.
Recent earthquakes in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Virginia,
that last one felt up and down the East Coast, have underscored
the national nature of earthquake risk. One of the most
important achievements that NEHRP has made is the translation
of research into national models of the location and expected
severity of earthquake shaking within specified time periods.
These models are in turn used to generate maps that are
incorporated into the seismic safety elements of building codes
and standards.
As you noted in your opening statement, earlier this month
the USGS released the latest update of the National Seismic
Hazard Maps, the timing coordinated with the consequent release
of the next generation of model building codes and seismic
safety standards, a process that involves close collaboration
among USGS, FEMA, the Building Seismic Safety Council, American
Society of Civil Engineers, International Code Council, and
other organizations. Complementing the national maps, urban
seismic hazard maps provide more detailed information on local
site conditions for use in engineering and planning, most
recently delivered for Evansville, Indiana.
Looking forward, the Administration's 2015 budget continues
several initiatives that Congress supported in 2014. In
particular, I wish to highlight Earthquake Early Warning, which
we see as representing the next advance in public safety.
Modern seismic networks can in favorable circumstances provide
a minute or more of warning before the onset of strong shaking.
In a number of countries around the world, operational
earthquake early warning systems exist today. The USGS has
supported research and development toward establishing such a
capability in California, and the test system is now operating
and delivering warnings to a small group of test users.
Considerable additional testing and equipment deployment will
be required to create a robust and reliable warning system, but
we are on our way.
In conclusion, USGS and the Department of the Interior
strongly support reauthorization of NEHRP. It has proven to be
a successful partnership that continues to make valuable
contributions to the Nation's resilience to earthquake and
other hazards.
Thank you, Chairman, for the opportunity to provide the
Subcommittee with the USGS views, and I would be pleased to
answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Applegate follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
I now recognize Mr. Wright for his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF MR. ROY E. WRIGHT,
DEPUTY ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR MITIGATION,
FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
Mr. Wright. Good morning, Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member
Lipinski, and Members of the Subcommittee. I thank you for
having me here today.
I am Roy Wright, the Deputy Associate Administrator for
Mitigation within the Department of Homeland Security's Federal
Emergency Management Agency. It is my pleasure to be here today
to discuss the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program
and FEMA's principal responsibilities within that program.
I want to start by giving you my simple bottom line. By
including science into building codes, conducting outreach, and
advancing mitigation, the NEHRP funds enable state-level
efforts to better prepare for earthquakes. These actions make
the Nation more resilient and better able to address this
threatening hazard. As others have said this morning, these are
no-notice events and they can be catastrophic. And we share the
view that while earthquakes may be inevitable, disasters caused
by earthquakes are not. This really guides everything that we
do.
FEMA and our NEHRP partners have made significant progress
in earthquake safety since NEHRP was established 37 years ago.
Although changing demographics and economic conditions present
challenges, the program is committed to building on our
progress, developing practical solutions to reduce or eliminate
the earthquake risk, and ensuring our nation's continued
resilience.
I would briefly like to talk with you this morning about
two areas of our focus: building codes and education. In terms
of building codes, NEHRP primarily works with the National
Codes and Standards to promote implementation of research
results. That is, we work with stakeholders to ensure the
promotion of and use of those building codes so that we all can
be safer. For example, FEMA worked with the International Code
Council and other partners in the 2009 edition of the
International Residential Code to develop updated provisions
for braced sheer wall panels which help ensure the stability of
a structure.
As you can see from the maps on the screens, adoption of
these codes strong in some areas of the country, particularly
those where they are most likely to experience an earthquake.
It is something we are proud of and we have worked hard with
our partners to achieve, but there is more to do. There are
still too many areas where the risk is high but adequate
building codes have not yet been adopted. This leaves these
communities vulnerable to the impacts of potential earthquakes.
We still have much more that needs to be done and we are
committed to educating these communities on best practices and
the importance of earthquake hazard mitigation, which brings me
to our second area of focus: education.
FEMA develops and supports public education and awareness
programs on earthquake loss reduction, sharing best practices,
and encouraging mitigation. We pursue all of this of course to
create resilience and help ensure the safety of our citizens. I
would like to give you but one example of our work in this
area. After we were approached by the City of San Francisco,
FEMA commissioned a study to examine whether it was possible to
retrofit only the first story of a weak-story building without
altering the rest. So a weak-story building is a multistory
wood-framed building where the first floor is much weaker than
the upper stories due to a garage or a storefront opening. FEMA
published its findings and created an electronic tool that
allows an engineer to assess the strength of walls on the first
floor and upper floors. Then the engineer can virtually
strengthen these walls and recalculate the strength. The goal
is to strengthen the first floor just enough so the entire
building can withstand an earthquake.
As a Nation, our architects, engineers, local officials,
homeowners, and our federal partners, we all have an
indispensable role to play in preparing for earthquakes and
mitigating their impacts. The NEHRP has done a commendable job
in identifying the hazards, communicating the risks, and
researching how we can protect our citizens. As we look forward
to reauthorization, more must be done. It is not enough to
educate the public about what earthquakes can do. Until we are
able to convince the public to take action to address that
risk, we have not truly implemented this program. We must
continue to work together across the whole community to move
beyond understanding risks to making concrete steps to mitigate
and strengthen our collective resilience.
Thank you and I appreciate the opportunity to come before
you this morning and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wright follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much. I would like to
thank the witnesses for their testimony.
I am reminding the Members that Committee rules limit
questioning to five minutes. The Chair at this point will open
the round of questions. The Chair recognizes himself for five
minutes.
Dr. Hayes notes in his testimony that maintaining the
serviceability of lifeline systems is critical to societal
resilience. What research and development is being supported
through NEHRP related to lifelines in a seismic event and what
more needs to be done? I will address that to Dr. Khargonekar
first.
Dr. Khargonekar. Chairman Bucshon, that is a very, very
important question. We are funding research in this area at a
number of institutions across the research universities in the
United States. I don't have a list of projects that we are
funding, but just to go back to the example I gave about high
density polyethylene pipes, this is a major impact of the kind
of work that NSF has supported in this space.
Chairman Bucshon. You might just--when you do have that
list might just submit that for the record so we will have that
in the Congressional record what you are doing.
Anyone else have any other comments?
Dr. Hayes, you mentioned this in your testimony.
Dr. Hayes. Yes, sir. If I could just comment briefly, the
NEHRP agencies are currently in the process of wrapping up a
study with a contractor who is examining all of the issues
related to lifelines research and implementation. That report
should be out sometime within 60 to 90 days, and it outlines
what NSF-supported researchers at the basic level need to do,
what NIST needs to do at the applied level, the kinds of things
that USGS needs to do, and the kinds of things that FEMA needs
to do to implement lifelines safety efforts as well.
And one of the key issues there is that lifelines are
absolutely critical to societal resilience in any given
community around the country, and one of the main findings so
far has been that no matter whether it is an earthquake or some
other hazard, the disruptions to lifelines are really critical
and we hope the study will help point all of us in the future
on what we should be doing in that area.
Dr. Applegate. Just very briefly, one area that we have
been working on is developing scenarios that sort of play out
the impacts of events, trying to make the hazard real to people
before they have to go through the catastrophic event. And
lifelines have been a very important part of that, getting the
operators together, getting their input, understanding what
those consequences--those cascading consequences are going to
be, and particularly in California and Southern California and
now with the new focus on the Hayward Fault in the Bay Area,
what those impacts--what can be done before the event to change
those outcomes.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
Mr. Wright, part of the preparedness puzzle is learning how
to work together and forming a seamless response and recovery
effort. Can you comment on the coordination between federal,
state, and local stakeholders and their roles in earthquake
response? You had some of that in your testimony, but kind of
talk about that a little more, and how do NEHRP stakeholders
coordinate efforts with emergency responders?
Mr. Wright. Absolutely. It is FEMA's responsibility to look
across all hazards and ensure that we are prepared for them.
And as we look at these seismic elements, very specific
investments have been made. In 2011 there was a national-level
exercise that looked across the New Madrid area where we
brought together the totality of the federal family, but
particularly working with the state emergency managers as well
as the state and locals. We do this across the West Coast. And
there is a particular relationship we share with the USGS on
this by which we are directed to ensure that the kind of
warnings and insights that can be given to us from the USGS
then move its way out. That helps from a response and from a
recovery. Obviously you look at these larger earthquakes that
played out in California, Loma Prieta, and Northridge where
significant dollars were made available under the Disaster
Relief Fund after the event. But collectively, it is that kind
of integrated respond that we do, and it is a long-standing
relationship, particularly between myself and Dr. Applegate and
others across our agencies to make that happen as cooperation
with the state and locals.
Chairman Bucshon. Yeah, because I think that is critically
important along with the lifelines. The last earthquake I was
in I was on the 6th floor of the hospital in Evansville,
Indiana, and nothing happened but if that was an area where a
hospital lost access to water and power that couldn't be
restored quickly, it is a big issue. I didn't think it was an
earthquake and the patient did. She was an elderly lady and she
said I think it is an earthquake. I said no, it can't be an
earthquake. So I turned on the TV and sure enough, it was an
earthquake.
I now recognize Mr. Lipinski for five minutes.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing. I am very hopeful that we can do a NEHRP
reauthorization soon.
It was good to hear all the testimony today. I want to
thank Dr. Applegate for work USGS has done with my staff and
with me. We have gone through a few conversations about an
earthquake that I felt sitting at my kitchen table at home that
was--we believe was induced by some quarrying activity and
there is more work going on with that. But it was very helpful
for me to be able to have those discussions to try to get at
and understand what had happened there, so I thank you for--
thank USGS for that.
I wanted to ask Dr. Khargonekar about social science
research. You mentioned in your testimony of the involvement of
social science research and NSF's efforts on earthquake
research. How does social, behavioral, and economic research
help with planning effective risk mitigation efforts and how
does--how is SBE research integrated into NSF's NEHRP
activities?
Dr. Khargonekar. Congressman Lipinski, thank you very much
for that question, which is evidently very important.
If you think about resiliency, which is certainly one of
the major objectives, people's behavior plays a huge role in
terms of how we can achieve systems that can recover from a
major disaster. NSF is funding a number of projects in that
area out of the Directorate of Engineering. We have a program
on Infrastructure Management and Extreme Events that funds
social science type of research. For example, how do we
communicate risk? How do people respond to those types of
communications?
And things are changing. I mean with the mobile phones and
cellular technologies and so forth, people are getting their
information in very different ways than used to be the case
before. We are funding research into the next frontier that can
allow us to leverage all the advances in technology and couple
it to people's perception of risk, the reactions to risk, and
those types of activities. So we believe this to be a very
important part of the research program. It is no good to come
up with technological solutions that people don't use for
improved public safety and the safety of themselves and their
property and so on and so forth.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you.
And I wanted to--the next thing I want to address is
building codes and address this to Dr. Hayes and Mr. Wright. We
know that strong and modern building codes are often cited as
the most effective tools for limiting the impact of
earthquakes. How do model building codes in the United States
compared to building codes in other countries such as Chile,
Haiti, Japan, and New Zealand? And what have we--what lessons
have we learned about the design of resilient structures from
the recent earthquakes in these countries that I mentioned?
So, Dr. Hayes, do you want to begin?
Dr. Hayes. I think our current building codes are actually
quite comparable to those that you would see in some of the
countries you mentioned, particularly New Zealand and Japan.
They are not identical. They have evolved in slightly different
ways, but the earthquake professional community around the
world is extremely close-knit and the provisions that are in
one country will bear a striking resemblance quite often to
provisions in another country.
The NEHRP agencies study the earthquake events that occur
in other countries to try to learn from them, particularly when
the building codes in those countries lead to construction that
is very similar to what we see in our country. And we are very
conscious of the earthquake that occurred down in Chile that
led to a lot of interest here in the United States and also the
one in New Zealand that occurred in Christchurch.
And in Christchurch, we haven't yet had a chance to study
that much about it, but a couple of things that have leaped out
at us about Christchurch is that the liquefaction that occurred
in the area is very similar to liquefaction that could occur in
many earthquake-prone areas in our country, particularly in the
middle United States. And the older buildings in Christchurch
that were severely damaged bear a striking resemblance to the
kinds of brittle or non-ductile buildings that you would see in
many cities in the United States, and I think there is a lesson
there that we all carry that these older buildings are really
something that really need to be looked at very carefully in
the future as we look at how we make our society more
resilient.
In New Zealand also I think that there was a realization
that a moderate earthquake which people had thought might
happen could be much more damaging than perhaps it was expected
to be in Christchurch. That was a devastating event there and
the area has not fully recovered yet over two years later. It
is still working on doing that.
In Chile, their primary means of engineered construction
was in reinforced concrete, and it turns out that in Chile they
have adopted much of the American Concrete Institute's
provisions for seismic design in our country, but not all, and
we have been studying what happened down there to learn from
what went well and what didn't go so well in their buildings
and have produced a couple of reports on that already.
Mr. Lipinski. End of my time but if the Chairman would
allow Mr. Wright--do you have anything to add?
Mr. Wright. Just briefly to build on that. I think that
what we learned from the work we see in Japan and Chile, we
work with the other agencies that are here after those events
and in particular to see how those elements will perform.
Again, we are on a three-year cycle with the building codes in
this nation by which we are continuing to make sure that those
are being updated. The 2015 ones have now been set, and we
would look to the kinds of things that we will learn from
Christchurch and Chile in terms of what it would mean to inform
the next cycle.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I will just--sure--Dr. Khargonekar, go ahead.
Dr. Khargonekar. Well, In the spirit of the question, I
would like to offer an example. We supported a RAPID response
team in Hawaii and Oregon State to perform a high resolution
survey of damaged coastline around Japan after the Tohoku
Earthquake. Now, cutting long story short, they have collect
data and their results are now being used by the committee
working on Chapter 6 on tsunami loads and effects for ASCE 7
standards. So we think that that is a great example where we
fund research to go collected data, do all the work, and it
comes back in effect. So we think that once the ASCE 7
standards are adopted, it will improve the whole building code
in that particular section. Thank you.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I now recognize Mr. Johnson for his line of questioning.
Mr. Johnson of Ohio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to
thank our panel for being with us today.
You know, while your agencies are the four NEHRP agencies
as defined in statute, I understand that other agencies such as
NASA also conduct seismic or earthquake-related research and
activities. Have there been any related earthquake-related
collaborations that your agencies participated in with other
agencies? And if so, what were those agencies and can you give
us any idea of the work that was done to help us better prepare
for earthquakes? Any of you?
Dr. Applegate. I can start on that one. Yeah, absolutely.
It is a very good point. There are many different agencies that
are involved in the earthquake arena and we actually have a
White House Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction that brings
together all of those agencies looking at different hazards and
it is a way to bring this partnership in and coordinate with
the broader effort.
With NASA, the USGS works very closely on, for example, SAR
technology, Synthetic Aperture Radar, where you can use
overlapping images to see change patterns. And so using that
remote sensing technology that has been developed through NASA
has been very valuable for understanding the damage patterns,
for example, after events.
We also work very closely with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. Of course they have very specific concerns and
issues as they ensure the safety of the Nation's nuclear power
plants and they have supported some tremendous research looking
at particularly some of these sort of very long-term--you know,
the Black Swan type events and events in the eastern and
central United States. So there are a number of other agencies
that play a key role here.
Mr. Johnson of Ohio. Okay. Thank you.
Anybody else?
Dr. Khargonekar. On the disaster recovery side of the
problem, we work closely with other agencies such as Department
of Transportation on developing plans on how one would recover
from disasters. We have ongoing research projects and
activities that bring together these communities.
Mr. Johnson of Ohio. Okay. All right. Well, thank you.
Shifting gears just a little bit, talking about earthquake
hazard mitigation, what type of research in your opinion is
needed to better understand and encourage people to adopt
earthquake hazard mitigation measures? I mean what is our
greatest weakness in terms of our current approach to
earthquake mitigation?
Mr. Wright. Well, I will start. It is--the country's
understanding of risk is a very difficult thing to somehow
pierce through. We see this across many of the natural hazards
by which they may understand that there is a hazard that could
affect them but they somehow believe that it won't necessarily
impact them the day that it occurs, this kind of cognitive
dissonance that sits there. And so it is that kind of
partnership that goes towards that social science research that
helps us get past those next kind of pieces.
You look across the Nation and, as I was showing the map of
it earlier, about--there are high seismic risks in parts of the
country, yet the element that we know does the most to help
mitigate that related to building codes, many have not chosen
yet to adopt those. And so these elements are things we
continue to collaborate, particularly with the National Science
Foundation, but others as well in terms of how do we link what
we know on the seismic side with the social science side?
Mr. Johnson of Ohio. So it is kind of ``it is not likely to
happen to me'' syndrome that we are dealing with?
Mr. Wright. That is exactly the case. And we struggle with
this across a whole range of hazards that we would deal with in
an emergency management space, but these kind of no-notice
events that happen on sort of a severe or catastrophic level on
a far less frequent basis really allow people's attention to
them to erode.
Dr. Khargonekar. I would like to just add a few comments to
what was stated. You know, one of the questions you may ask is
what is the impact of having insurance on people's behavior in
adoption of solutions? So we funded again collaborative
research with colleagues in New Zealand because their situation
is very similar to the United States' situation with respect to
insurance, and we are funding research, we are collecting data
from Christchurch to see what was the impact of having
different kinds of insurance on people's behaviors and
decisions, so it is sort of the social, behavioral science type
of activity, and that complements what was said earlier.
Mr. Johnson of Ohio. So do you have any examples of low-
hanging fruit in overcoming that risk avoidance or
lackadaisical attitude if you will? I guess that is a good way
to phrase it. Any ideas on how we go about penetrating that?
You talked about some of them but----
Mr. Wright. I think part of what we have found when we deal
with these issues some of it happens from a grassroots
perspective but local elected leaders and particularly the
economic drivers in the community often are the kind of place
by which they are able to provide the kind of leadership in a
State--you look at--there are particular things that happen in
some of the major industries that are in the Memphis area and
how they began to really lean forward in this space and work
with those local electives to pay more attention to this kind
of risk.
Mr. Johnson of Ohio. Okay. Well, thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I would like to just comment on what you talked about
briefly and I think in healthcare we are acutely aware of
people's lack of understanding of statistical probability. I
think it may start in grade school where we are not doing a
good enough job for people, in all seriousness, understanding
statistics, and that is very important. Without that
understanding, you can't really figure out what the risk is
so----
Mr. Wright. Without question.
Chairman Bucshon. Yes.
Mr. Collins, I recognize you for five minutes.
Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am kind of a private sector guy. I am new to Congress but
I have spent decades in the private sector, and I always come
to work and when I tour companies now, the first thing I look
for on the wall is a vision statement. Why did you come to work
today? And a mission statement, what are we going to try to
accomplish? And I always talk about five-year strategic plan
and so forth and so on, just very metric-driven and results-
oriented.
So I guess with half the money--Dr. Applegate, for NEHRP,
more or less half of it going to your agency, and I know you
are natural hazards so that is beyond just earthquakes, but a
simple question. Is there an underlying vision statement and/or
mission statement related to the work that we are doing on
earthquakes that somebody would see when they come to work and
say this is the Holy Grail? Or--and is there a strategic plan
within your organization? And if so, are there like three
things you could point to, ABC, that you accomplished last year
and three more this year and three more next year, just kind of
hard things?
Dr. Applegate. Sure, absolutely. Working in the broader
hazards mission of the USGS, and I oversaw these earthquake
efforts previous to that, yes, you know why you get up in the
morning and it is about making the American people safer. It is
as simple as that. It is a public safety mission. We are trying
to ensure that science is there to help people when the event
strikes so that we are providing the situational awareness,
where the shaking is most intense, what the emergency managers
need to be able to respond, what the public needs to know.
But the most important things we do are what happens before
the event and that is what has been talked about a lot here. We
use our seismic hazard assessments to bring everything that we
know about the hazard both from the fundamental research coming
through NSF, as well as the targeted research we do that feeds
then into the building code process and helps to make people
safer. So you have the one element is the monitoring, the
situational awareness; the other is the assessment
understanding so that you can build buildings that are going to
be safe for people.
And the third piece of it is education. It is just what we
were talking about. How do you make these hazards real to
people? And so we do a lot with our agency partners in the
public preparedness arena, the shakeout events which now--
started in California but they now involve--I think we are up
to about 38 of the States--FEMA has been a big supporter of
this--to simply get people to participate in drop, cover, and
hold drills and do one of the things to protect themselves.
Jack would be the best to talk about the broader NEHRP
strategic plan. Within USGS, we have nested our earthquake
hazards program plan within that broader NEHRP strategy as well
as within our broader natural hazards mission.
Mr. Collins. Now, I would think early warning would go a
long way. And I understand we have got a pilot program in
California, but if there is probably anything that could truly
save lives, you can't prevent the earthquake, but if somebody
had even the one- or two-minute warning, it----
Dr. Applegate. Absolutely. I mean I think what we saw in
the Japan, there are three key elements. I mean there were
relatively low--from the magnitude 9 earthquake, giant
earthquake that struck that country, relatively low fatalities
from the earthquake shaking itself, probably in the order of
maybe 100, 150. That reflects three things. One of them is
building codes. They were--people were in buildings that did
not collapse, and that is I think the first thing and the most
important. Then it is that public awareness, that culture. The
third thing is they have early warning and so people did
receive the notice before the shaking event so they could get
themselves safe. There are a lot of things that can be done
even with just a few seconds. And so we are trying to move
towards that for that very reason.
Mr. Collins. Do you have a goal in mind there? Again, back
to vision statements, is there a goal to have early warning at
least in the most critical areas by date certain and is there a
way to measure that? And----
Dr. Applegate. Yes. We have just recently issued an
implementation plan for earthquake early warning for the West
Coast, so the beginning phase is the pilot effort in California
expanding up the West Coast. But in many ways the high hazard
areas, for example, in the central United States where you are
likely to have shaking experienced over very broad areas, you
would actually get additional time before that shaking arrives,
so less frequent events but the potential for damage over much
broader areas. So, yes, absolutely, we have those plans in
place. We would be very happy to share those.
Mr. Collins. Yeah. No, thank you very much.
It looks like my time is expired. I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
And at this point I would like to thank the witnesses for
your valuable testimony. It is a very fascinating subject.
The Members of the committee may have additional questions
as we asked about the list of funding projects for you and we
will ask you to respond to those in writing. The witnesses are
excused, and at this point we will take a very short break
prior to the next panel. Thank you very much.
[Recess.]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much. Now, I will
introduce our witnesses for our second panel.
Our first witness of our second panel is Dr. Julio Ramirez.
Dr. Ramirez is Professor of Civil Engineering, Chief Officer of
the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation and NEEScomm
Center Director at the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation at Purdue University. And I
have visited their facility; it is a great facility.
Our second witness is Dr. William Savage, Manager of
William Savage Consulting, LLC. He is also an Adjunct Professor
in the Department of Geoscience and Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering and Construction at the University of
Nevada Las Vegas.
Our third witness is Mr. Jonathan Monken, Director of the
Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Mr. Monken previously
served as Acting Director of the Illinois State Police and
possesses a distinguished military career having served in
Kosovo and Iraq. Thank you for that service. It is much
appreciated.
Our final witness is Dr. Andrew Whittaker. Dr. Whittaker is
Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil, Structural, and
Environmental Engineering at the University at Buffalo, and the
Director of MCEER.
As our witnesses know, spoken testimony is limited to five
minutes each, after which Members of the committee will ask
questions for five minutes. Your written testimony will be
included in the record of the hearing.
I now recognize our first witness, Dr. Ramirez, for five
minutes.
TESTIMONY OF DR. JULIO A. RAMIREZ,
PROFESSOR OF CIVIL ENGINEERING,
NEES CHIEF OFFICER AND NEESCOMM CENTER DIRECTOR,
GEORGE E. BROWN JR.,
NETWORK FOR EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING SIMULATION
(NEES), PURDUE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Ramirez. Good morning and thank you for the
opportunity, Chairman Bucshon, Congressman Lipinski, and
distinguished Members of the panel, to testify before the
Congress as you work to reauthorize the National Earthquake
Hazards Reduction Program, NEHRP.
I am Julio Ramirez, a Professor of Structural Engineering
in the School of Civil Engineering of Purdue University in West
Lafayette, Indiana, and the Chief Officer of the NSF-funded
George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering
Simulation, NEES.
Existing vulnerable buildings and infrastructure assets are
the number one seismic safety problem in the United States and
the world today. Since the 1980s, I have been involved in the
development of building codes and conducted research in
earthquake safety of buildings and bridges. I have lead or
participated in some eight reconnaissance missions starting
with the earthquake of Northridge, California. The central
purpose of these missions was to gather perishable data on the
performance of bridges and buildings following major
earthquakes to distill lessons to improve the seismic
resilience of our society.
The NEHRP vision is for a nation that is earthquake-
resilient with regard to public safety, economic strength, and
national security. NEHRP provides the critical support
structure for seismic protection in the United States. The NSF
provides the fundamental research arm of NEHRP supporting
research in engineering, Earth, and the social sciences. To
mitigate the earthquake risk by reducing the vulnerability of
the built environment, the NSF-funded NEES originated in 2004
as a national multiuser research infrastructure, and its
central mission aligns with the larger NEHRP national plan for
earthquake risk reduction. May I have the first slide, please?
[Slide.]
Dr. Ramirez. NEES laboratories are used for research
conducted or funded by the NSF, other government agencies, and
by private industry. To date, more than 400 multiyear, multi-
investigative projects have been completed or are in progress
at NEES sites. These projects are yielding a wealth of valuable
experimental data and continue to produce informational
research and outcomes that impact the engineering practice from
building models to design guidelines and codes.
Information on the impact of NEES work is submitted with my
written testimony as Reference 3, ``NEES, 2004-2014, A Decade
of Earthquake Engineering Research.'' In this document there
are--there is information regarding lifelines projects that
have been funded by NSF and many other references as well.
The human capital gain in this activity represented by the
more than 2,000 graduate and undergraduate students that have
participated in on-site of NEES researchers also supports the
United States in retaining a competitive edge in the STEM
areas. Many of the world's global challenges such as the
mitigation of earthquake risk can best be met with a strong
presence of engineers working in teams with social scientists
and other experts, yet the number of U.S. engineering students
is declining.
Purdue University and our College of Engineering have taken
a leadership role as part of a national call to graduate 10,000
more engineers per year enhancing our state and national
capacity for innovation, economic growth, and solutions to
global challenges.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
Dr. Ramirez. Linking the NEES experimental facilities to
its users in the community is the NEES cyber infrastructure.
This unique system of IT resources enables researchers
participating at the facilities or remotely to collect, view,
process, and store data from NEES experiments and to conduct
numerical simulations with access to key U.S. high-performance
computing resources.
At the heart of this system is NEEShub, a platform designed
to facilitate information exchange and collaboration among
earthquake engineering research and other stakeholders. NEEShub
features the NEES Data Repository with over 2.5 million data
files. This public repository is used to store and share data
of research and research results.
Final slide, please.
[Slide.]
Dr. Ramirez. Since the first release of NEEShub in August
2010 it has served tens of thousands of users of more than 200
countries.
In conclusion, maintaining a balanced program supporting
research and the Earth science, engineering, and social
sciences is important. In achieving resilience of communities
against earthquakes and tsunamis, engineering-related research
is of the highest priority as it directly impacts the
mitigation of the extent of damage to the built environment and
can reduce the time needed for recovery. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Ramirez follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
I recognize Dr. Savage for five minutes for his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. WILLIAM U. SAVAGE,
CONSULTING SEISMOLOGIST,
WILLIAM SAVAGE CONSULTING, LLC
Dr. Savage. Thank you, Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member
Lipinski, and Members of the Subcommittee.
I am speaking to you today on behalf of the Seismological
Society of America, a scientific organization devoted to the
advancement of seismology and the understanding of earthquakes
for the benefit of society. I also am speaking specifically
about lifelines and my experience there devolves from 15 years
working for Pacific Gas and Electric Company in San Francisco
in the late '80s until 2000.
My written testimony addresses four pertinent questions
that I was asked. Although there is not time this morning to
cover all four, I would like to discuss the question asked
about my views on the Nation's level of earthquake preparation
and resiliency regarding lifelines, particularly the urban
utility systems for electric power, natural gas, potable water,
and wastewater. These systems are the underpinning of our
modern society.
To get to the essential point, I personally think that we
actually do not know how resilient our urban utilities systems
are in terms of their operability to deliver customer service
after the next strong earthquake. Utility personnel may have
opinions one way or another but they generally do not have a
strong objective basis for a definitive statement.
In my written testimony I briefly discussed four guideline
documents prepared by FEMA's American Lifelines Alliance that
use currently available information to provide guidance for
conducting such assessments for the four types of urban utility
systems. The guidance calls for systematic and quantitative
consideration of the two key aspects of each assessment: first,
specification of the local and regional earthquake hazards,
both ground shaking and ground failures; and secondly,
estimation of the expected performance of the utility system
components given the hazard and the impact of the expected
performance on customers.
The American Lifelines Alliance guidelines can only go so
far in giving a rigorous answer to questions about what would
happen if this or that earthquake occurred. The next stage of
lifeline resiliency assessment is calling for development of
more refined hazard characterizations using advances in
geotechnical and seismological modeling to estimate ground
motions and ground failures. The U.S. Geological Survey is
already engaged in research that is leading to such advances.
Performance modeling of pipelines, substation equipment,
overhead transmission structures, et cetera, is also advancing
with NSF and NIST exploring research in these areas. Operating
utilities and related professional organizations are evaluating
the benefits of such advances and are likely to help fund them.
These advances are necessary to achieve a high level of
confidence in understanding the earthquake performance of
lifeline components and thus the resiliency of utility
operations. One of the mechanisms to pursue this goal is a
reauthorized NEHRP program. Authorization of this valuable
program provides continuity and stability for the NEHRP
agencies.
In closing, I should point out the obvious. There are two
ways to find out if a utility lifeline is resilient to
earthquakes. The first way is to invest in improved hazard
characterizations and performance models for lifelines and plan
to mitigate the unacceptable risks. The second way is to just
wait and see what happens in the next damaging earthquake.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you and I
would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Savage follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Yeah, hopefully we can use the former in
that to figure this out.
I now recognize Mr. Monken for five minutes for his
testimony.
TESTIMONY OF MR. JONATHON MONKEN,
DIRECTOR AND HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR,
ILLINOIS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
Mr. Monken. Thank you very much, Chairman Bucshon, Ranking
Member Lipinski. I very much appreciate the opportunity to be
here to speak with all of you and represent the Illinois
Emergency Management Agency, Governor Quinn, and the State of
Illinois to discuss this incredibly important program of the
National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.
So it is a critical asset not just in our ability to work
with the earthquake hazard but all hazards because it is really
about that collaborative nature that the program is really
founded under.
My biggest concern right now with the program overall is
that the collaborative nature in which it was founded to
execute is something that we have kind of strayed from over the
course of the past few years. And there is a variety of
different reasons why that has happened, but right now, it
comes at a time when the risk of this particular hazard, we are
gaining a better understanding of it and we are certainly
seeing both increased frequency of seismic activity and we are
getting a better understanding of the severity of the potential
threat. And that was mentioned earlier with the USGS's release
of their updated earthquake hazard maps and some of the
statistics that we see just from the last few years.
So taken in context in Illinois and the central United
States, that area of the country on average from 1981 to 2011
saw an average of 20 earthquakes per year. In the last three
years we have seen a quintuple increase in the frequency of
earthquakes to the tune of 100 earthquakes per year. So this in
another itself is certainly concerning but it also highlights
the importance of what we are talking about here.
Now, it is a little-known fact that the most powerful
earthquake in the continental United States in history actually
happened in the central United States in 1811 and 1812 when a
7.7 magnitude earthquake struck and two aftershocks. If a
comparable magnitude earthquake struck today in the same area,
it would cause economic damage to the total of about $300
billion. Put into context, Hurricane Katrina, the most
expensive U.S. disaster in history to date, was $106 billion.
So there is a lot of progress that we can make in a lot of
things that we have seen to make progress in this area in the
emergency management community. A specific example is the
CAPSTONE-14 exercise conducted in June of this year when we had
an opportunity for 2,500 personnel in 20 States to participate
in this four-day event. We beta-tested the first-ever
multistate common operating picture sharing more than 13,000
real-time status updates of critical data from 440 counties and
seven impacted states. Additionally, we launched the first
National Resource Database with more than 500 mission-ready
packaged asset deploying from 18 different states across the
country. The tools and processes created for this exercise have
fundamentally changed the way we plan for, respond to, and
recover from disasters of all types. Additionally, we developed
awareness campaigns such as the Great U.S. ShakeOut with
millions of people participating across the country. We also
improved school safety drills and created public service
announcements to educate those in areas of the country where
the threat still remains a relative unknown.
Despite these successes, these efforts also served to
identify gaps in our systems and capabilities, as well as the
inherent weaknesses in our critical infrastructure and life-
support systems. The problem in front of us now is, because of
these issues, right now the track of NEHRP really threatens to
not only lose some of the lessons that we have learned in
recent years but really take us back to a time that predates
the existence of the program.
Some of these problems began with the expiration of the
NEHRP authorization of 2009, as has been discussed extensively
today, and the lack of reauthorization since then. This program
absolutely deserves to be a legislative priority and balance
should be restored in terms of how the program is governed and
funded. While emergency management plays a significant role in
earthquake preparation response and mitigation, only 1 of the
15 Members of the NEHRP Advisory Committee actually comes from
the emergency management profession.
From a funding perspective, emergency management is also
grossly underrepresented, receiving less than seven percent of
all funds allocated for this particular threat. To make matters
worse, the state-level earthquake program managers are rapidly
disappearing due to a decision by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency pulling all state funding in Federal Fiscal
Year 2013.
The need for coordination between all levels of government
has never been greater, and yet the program continues to lag
behind at the federal level because of FEMA's NEHRP office
being buried and fragmented within the agency. This disjointed
approach makes it even more important for the earthquake
consortia located throughout the State that perform that
multistate coordination effort. Language related to consortia
absolutely needs to be restored as part of the authorization
recognizing these entities as critical in the process of
multistate coordination for these particular threats and along
regional lines.
The most important change in research and development
measures is a better integration of the components of the
program. NEHRP was designed to be a hazard reduction program,
not just hazard research and to conduct more targeted risk
assessments based on joint evaluations from program
participants. These assessments should be focused on more
detailed impact analysis and sectors of critical infrastructure
such as road and bridge networks, rail systems, potable and
wastewater systems, voice and data communications in the
national power grid to use the limited resources that we have
on the most important projects first.
I appreciate the time here today and I look forward to any
questions that you might have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Monken follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
I now recognize Dr. Whittaker for his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. ANDREW S. WHITTAKER,
PROFESSOR AND CHAIR, DIRECTOR MCEER;
DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL, STRUCTURAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING,
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO,
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
Dr. Whittaker. Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski,
and other Members of the committee, good morning.
My name is Andrew Whittaker and I am delighted to appear
before you this morning. I am an academic structural engineer
employed as a Professor of Civil Engineering in the Department
of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering at the
University at Buffalo and I serve as the Director of the
earthquake-focused center known by the acronym MCEER.
Your letter of invitation asked me to respond to four
specific items in my written testimony and I talk to only one
of the four today for reasons of time. And the question is what
are your recommendations for research and development measures
in earthquake preparation and mitigation?
The United States Geological Survey is building the
Advanced National Seismic System, as identified previously by
Dr. Applegate. Information from the instruments in the System
will permit refinement in the mapping of the earthquake
hazards, the development of improved ground motion prediction
equations, and a much better understanding of how clusters of
buildings respond to earthquakes. Importantly, the successful
and complete deployment of the Advanced National Seismic System
by the USGS will enable the Earthquake Early Warning System
that was identified previously. ANSS is not being deployed at
the speed originally envisioned and I recommend that ANSS be
completed as quickly as possible and that its maintenance and
use be adequately funded.
Second, the National Science Foundation has operated the
NEES collaboratory since 2004. As Professor Ramirez noted, the
equipment sites within the collaboratory offer unique physical
testing capabilities ranging from geotechnical centrifuges to
earthquake simulators to a tsunami wave basin. University at
Buffalo is home to one of these NEES equipment sites. Professor
Ramirez identified the benefits of NEES that have found their
way into our building standards and building codes already. The
NEES collaboratory will end in September 2014 to be replaced by
a smaller number of equipment sites with an expanded treatment
of hazards. It is unclear what the impact on seismic risk
reduction and earthquake resilience will be, but the momentum
we have gained over the past decade will certainly be lost
unless the National Science Foundation's support for earthquake
engineering research is maintained at current levels or
increased.
Five subject areas deserving of future NEHRP resources are
identified in my written testimony and these cut across the 18
elements of the National Research Council roadmap. I will focus
here on three of the five. First, lifelines. Lifelines such as
water, gas, and oil pipelines, power transmission systems, and
rail lines and highways and bridges provide the core of
resilience. Their failure or part thereof has led to
significant cascading financial losses in past earthquakes and
their unavailability after an earthquake dramatically slows
response and recovery. The interdependency of lifelines and the
regional and national economic and social impacts of their loss
in the event of a major earthquake are not understood.
Lifelines should be a focus of NEHRP because they substantially
affect earthquake resilience and in my opinion have received
far too little attention to date.
Progress has been made in the domain of performance-based
earthquake engineering through NSF funding, NEES research, and
the FEMA-funded ATC-58 project. Additional work is needed to
refine the tools and calculation procedures, address other
types of buildings and structural systems, to better consider
the effects of soil structure interaction, and to extend the
products to non-building structures.
Technology transfer and earthquake engineering has
traditionally been accomplished by the promulgation of codes,
standards, and guidelines. NEHRP has made many significant
contributions to the standards, codes, and guidelines, and
these efforts must be continued. In the past six years, NIST
has sponsored the preparation of technical briefs that
transform basic and applied research into practical guidance
for design professionals, enabling them to fully leverage
federal investments in NSF and USGS, and this activity must
also continue.
FEMA plays a critical role in implementing risk mitigation
measures developed by its NEHRP agency partners and others, and
I recommend that support for FEMA be substantially strengthened
to enable effective implementation, which is the key to
achieving resilience.
In closing, continued support at NEHRP is vital because the
risk our nation faces measured here in terms of economic loss,
business interruption, dislocation of social fabric, and
casualties grows by the day because mission-critical
infrastructure, property, and population density are increasing
in locations affected by earthquakes. Our nation will not
become earthquake-resilient if the NEHRP agency partnership
with the earthquake professional community is ended.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Whittaker follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much for your testimony
and thank all the witnesses. And be assured that your written
testimony is critical to the committee even though we don't
have a large number of Members here today. Your both spoken and
written testimony is critical when we try to reauthorize these
programs. So I wanted you to know that.
Also, I thank Mr. Monken because this past winter I had two
family Members stuck on I-57 for about 12 hours when you had
that big snowstorm. But--I don't know if you were there then
but--and your agency was very responsive trying to find out the
status of my family. It was about ten below zero and there were
accidents on 57 and people were stuck for a long time, so thank
you. And I will take that personal privilege to thank your
agency at this point.
Mr. Monken. You are very welcome, sir.
Chairman Bucshon. And I am going to remind the Members that
the committee rules limit questioning to five minutes.
The Chair at this point will recognize himself for five
minutes. And I will direct this to Dr. Ramirez.
And I say this a little tongue-in-cheek, are all the major
problems in earthquake engineering solved and should we now
focus on solving problems in response and recovery?
Dr. Ramirez. Thank you, Chairman, for the question.
To improve the resilience of our society, it is important
not only to facilitate the road to recovery but also to limit
the amount of damage that occurs after an event. And here is
where mitigation plays a critical role not only in identifying
the vulnerable infrastructure, assessing it properly, and then
putting in place measures to upgrade its performance. Work is
very much needed in that area and should be continued.
Chairman Bucshon. And Purdue has--also to you, Dr. Ramirez,
Purdue has pledged to increase the number of engineers
graduated. How do undergraduate and graduate engineering
students participate in the research funded by the National
Science Foundation grant to Purdue and NEES, and how does that
contribution to their success--how does that contribute to
their success post-graduation?
Dr. Ramirez. Thank you. The contribution is essential in
the development of the conduct of the research. They do it at
various levels. One of the most successful programs in NEES is
the research experience for undergraduates. Since the program
was instituted about eight years or so ago, close to 700
undergraduates have benefited from this experience. Of those,
fully half of them have continued to do research as graduate
students in the earthquake engineering field. Furthermore, in
these last two years, graduates from the REU program have been
now graduate students mentoring current REU students.
The graduate students are the blood of the research that is
conducted throughout NEES, fully including Ph.D.s and masters.
Over 1,200 of them have gotten their degrees through Purdue. Of
the Ph.D. students, 75 percent of them have gone into academia
and are now many of them researchers in NEES as well.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you very much.
And this would be for all witnesses. What is the greatest
weakness in the current approach to earthquake mitigation?
Anyone want to tackle the question?
Mr. Monken.
Mr. Monken. So, first off, I was in the emergency
operations center all night. I didn't sleep until everyone made
it out at about 5:00 a.m.----
Chairman Bucshon. You remember that, right?
Mr. Monken. Every--absolutely. January 6 I will not forget.
Chairman Bucshon. Yeah.
Mr. Monken. I think for--when it comes to mitigation the
hard part is the size of the elephant is enormous and trying to
prioritize those efforts is where we run into significant
issues. There is not enough funding in the world and there
aren't enough programs in the world to address them all. And I
think the untapped potential that exists with the Members of
the NEHRP really comes down to a more targeted approach of risk
assessment as we go through and identify the projects that are
most critical. So when we look at those lifeline sources, that
was articulated well by many of the witnesses here today,
starting with some of those systems to be able to try and
address some of the systemic weaknesses that exist within the
systems I think will have the most significant impact in terms
of loss of life and property. So that prioritization I think in
mitigation is the biggest shortfall that we had today to make
sure that we are making the best use of limited assets.
Chairman Bucshon. How do we do that? How do we make that
happen?
Mr. Monken. I think with a greater integration when we look
at things like the exercises that we conduct and a better
integration with the private sector. So the last exercise we
conducted was extremely valuable because we had 45 companies
running parallel exercises simultaneously to give us a better
and more detailed understanding of that 85 percent of all
critical infrastructure that resides within the private sector.
So they can help us prioritize some of their efforts and we can
do a better assessment holistically if we see that better
cross-section of the research community embedded within the
exercise programs of emergency management as well.
Chairman Bucshon. Anyone else have any comments?
Dr. Savage.
Dr. Savage. I think the uncertainty in the NEHRP
organizations based on the lack of authorization of the program
is a tremendous threat, and I think that action that you all
are looking at is probably in the near term the most important
thing that can be done.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you. Dr. Whittaker, you have----
Dr. Whittaker. Just a short comment. You asked what is the
greatest weakness in risk mitigation? I would say not knowing
our exposure. And in my written testimony I have an example of
the ports of L.A. and Long Beach through which 40 percent of
our nation's imports flow. The loss of those ports would have a
catastrophic financial impact on our nation, not just Southern
California but the impact would stretch all the way across the
country. We just don't yet know what those impacts would be. We
don't know the interdependency of the lifelines, and until we
do, it will be difficult to develop cost-effective mitigation
strategies.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I now recognize Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, I want to start off by thanking
Dr. Ramirez for emphasizing the need for more training for more
engineers in our country. We certainly need more engineers in
our nation and we need more engineers in Congress also I think.
Director Monken, I want to also thank you for your service
to our nation and your service now to the State of Illinois.
Obviously from what Chairman Bucshon was--the story he relayed,
you are doing a good job there in some very tough times.
One question I wanted to ask Director Monken, how is the--
how is your work with the federal government? Is there more
that the federal government can be doing, in terms of
coordinating with States? Is there anything that you would
recommend?
Mr. Monken. Yeah, I think there is a couple issues that are
out there right now. One is that the National Earthquake
Program is not treated similarly to other catastrophic hazards,
specifically hurricane is an example. So the National
Earthquake Program does not have a dedicated program manager;
there is not an SES-level individual at FEMA dedicated to the
earthquake program. It is currently housed in Mitigation, which
is not obviously an unimportant component of what we are
talking about. It is hugely important. However, it does not
give--because of its presence in Mitigation, it doesn't give it
full access to the capacity of FEMA as the hurricane program
has in the response and recovery division in terms of access to
funding, additional resources, things like that.
And then as I mentioned in my testimony, the removal of
funding directly to States to fund earthquake program managers
at the state level being pulled in Fiscal Year 2013 has really
created a situation now where we have very, very limited
engagement. Right now, there are more FEMA regions that don't
have an earthquake program manager than FEMA regions that do,
and that is a huge problem because that is the point of
coordination for emergency management nationally and it also
underscores the importance of these consortia, the three
earthquake consortia located throughout the United States that
are region-specific. And they perform an incredible task of
that state-to-state coordination and yet have not seen any
changes in their funding or programmatic or policy-level
support in the past 20 years. So the lack of emphasis on some
of those grassroots coordinating programs I think has had a
detrimental effect.
Mr. Lipinski. And one other question I wanted to ask, as
you notice a theme here, I am an engineer. I am also a social
scientist. I have always asked about the social science aspects
of--any issue that we are dealing with and the research and how
you deal with the human element.
So let me start with Director Monken. What kind of work do
you do to try to ensure that people of the State of Illinois
understand the risks from earthquakes? Is this a--do you find
this to be a big problem? I know most people are going to think
more about tornadoes than they do about earthquakes, but how
does all of that come together? And what you do in terms of
trying to make people aware of the risk and also to prepare
them--so that they know what to do in case there is a major
earthquake?
Mr. Monken. Yes, sir. It is a great question and I think it
is accurately highlighted as a significant issue. We have had
11 declared disasters in Illinois in the last five years, none
of which were earthquakes, so that is really where a lot of the
emphasis happened. But I think some of the public awareness
campaigns that we have done, the areas where we have had
specific success is certainly within schools and that is where
Chairman Bucshon was right on. Elementary school students,
these are the folks that actually retain this information for
the rest of their lives. Adults have made up their minds for
all intents and purposes. In trying to reach out to students
and educate them on those threats, there is the educational
component that exists with it and that extends through the
development and training of engineers at all levels. All those
levels of understanding are important.
We also saw that our PSAs were actually generated by high
school and college students in the States, so we actually put
it to them to come up with public awareness campaigns, videos,
and radio bits that were much more effective in actually
reaching their peers instead of a government person like myself
trying to relate to a 12-year-old and telling them why this is
important. Have another one of their fellow students
communicate that message to them.
And the ShakeOut grew from just a handful of a few thousand
people the first year to the annual competition between
Illinois and Indiana to see who can get more people to
participate and over 10 million people participating nationally
last year, those are successes that really need to be
reinforced.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, and I appreciate all of the
witnesses' comments on NEHRP, and again I emphasize that
hopefully we will get reauthorization done. And I think all of
your comments have--are very helpful to us as we work to move
that forward.
So I yield back.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
I recognize Mr. Hultgren.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you so much,
panel, for being here. I think this is really important for us
to be able to hear how NEHRP affects practitioners, especially
those at the state and local level, really on the ground, so I
really thank you. And I especially want to thank Director
Monken. So good to have you here. I appreciate your service to
our country and to our State, and please say hi to your family
back in St. Charles as well.
Mr. Monken. Yes, sir. Will do.
Mr. Hultgren. I am glad you are here.
Director Monken, I wanted to address a couple questions to
you first if I could. First, does NEHRP program--does the
program produce actionable data for the emergency management
community? If so, what types of data are produced, shared, and
utilized, and how are technical guidance, behavior research,
and other information produced by NEHRP agencies shared with
local stakeholders?
Mr. Monken. So the answer is yes and no. So there is
actually an incredible amount of information and data that is
generated from the entities that are represented here as
witnesses today and many other folks who are not, but the hard
part is turning information into intelligence, and the
difference is whether or not it is actionable. And we have
gotten a good partnership with U.S. Geological Survey. We had
been able to use some of there what they call the PAGER program
where people can actually report ground shake from their mobile
phones to give us a clear picture of what is happening and to
what extent the ground is shaking. Those things are all very,
very important.
What we want to do is tie it together in a more practical
sense and have a more collaborative outreach between emergency
management to make sure that those efforts are as integrated as
possible to make sure that the time being spent on research is
targeted to the areas with greatest impact in terms of lives
and property saved and really trying to make sure that it is
more of a user-defined system.
So some of the information-sharing that we pilot-tested
during the exercises here was unprecedented. Four hundred and
forty counties in seven States have never shared data in any
way, shape, or form in any disaster in U.S. history. I can't
overstate the importance of that. But the research community
absolutely needs to be integrated into that process to make
sure that the models that are being generated and research are
being compared and utilized to effectively execute the
exercise.
Mr. Hultgren. Is there an openness you think for that,
first of all recognizing that the successes of the pilot
program but then seeing potential hurdles and dealing with
those hurdles? Is there an openness there? I guess how can we
help?
Mr. Monken. Yes, sir. Well, certainly the reauthorization
of the program is hugely important and some of the changes I
mentioned at FEMA I think would go a long way to making sure we
are doing that, and then supporting the consortia because that
is--CUSEC, the Central United States Earthquake Consortium that
Illinois and Indiana are part of, was actually the organization
that ran that exercise. It wasn't a federally led effort. So
reinforcing that type of success is absolutely important.
But I think it is fertile ground. Everybody wants the same
thing when it comes down to it. The hard part is making sure,
as I mentioned, the NEHRP Advisory Council out of 15 people
only has one emergency manager on it. It is very difficult to
understand local and state impact when they are not represented
on that group that is consulting on how we should be guiding
the program. So that is hugely important.
But I think it is fertile ground to do it and I think the
folks that are doing the research, they want that input; they
want that interplay because it only makes their research more
targeted and more effective just like we want access to that
information to build our exercises around and then ultimately
compare that to a real-world event.
Mr. Hultgren. Dr. Monken, I wondered if you could address--
quickly, we touched on this a little bit--but if you could talk
a little bit more about the state of research and development
for hazard mitigation tools and products. These activities must
meet the needs of state and local officials who must prepare
their communities for disaster and help them respond. How well
do NEHRP activities meet state and local needs and how could
efforts be better aligned? We kind of touched on that already,
but what are the lessons that can be drawn from the resilience
demonstrated in responding to a moderate earthquake and in
preparing for a great one?
Mr. Monken. So I think the issues that we have seen that we
have run into is in large part some of the state and local
mitigation programs are very compartmentalized. So each of the
programs or proposals are analyzed individually. So as we go
through the FEMA process for spending mitigation dollars, each
program is evaluated on its own merits without a great deal of
consideration for the interconnectivity with corresponding
projects in the same area of impact within the same scope of
the hazard.
So I think that component needs to be brought to bear in
more detail, not to mention the fact that in many cases if it
is the private sector that benefits specifically from it, so if
it is a utility company that has a mitigation project they want
to do, that is not something that we do within the federal
mitigation program. So how do we coordinate their efforts to
make sure that we don't build, as we like to say, cylinders of
excellence or these individual silos that are--that have these
pockets of competency that aren't really tied into the
interconnectivity of these lifeline systems that are out there?
So that is where the private sector outreach comes into
play. So utility companies alone, there are 3,000 utility
providers in the country, and trying to tie those folks
together is difficult but they are willing participants to do
it. And I think some of the issues are really known. If an
earthquake like this hit the central United States, power would
be out for 6 to 9 months, not days or weeks.
Mr. Hultgren. Yeah. Well, my time is coming to a close.
Thank you again, all of you, for being here. I appreciate your
input on this important program.
Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Bucshon. Thank you.
At this point I will thank all the witnesses for your
valuable testimony. Like I said, your written testimony--your
spoken testimony is very important to the committee and for the
Members for their questions.
The Members of the committee may have additional questions
for you and we will ask you to respond in writing. The record
will remain open for two weeks for additional comments and
written questions from Members.
At this point the witnesses are excused and the hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:49 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Pramod P. Khargonekar
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Mr. Roy E. Wright
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Julio A. Ramirez
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. William U. Savage
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Mr. Jonathon Monken
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Andrew S. Whittaker
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Statement submitted by Subcommittee
Ranking Member Daniel Lipinski
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Letters submitted by Subcommittee on Research and Technology
Chairman Larry Bucshon
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Letter submitted by Mr. Jay Berger, Executive Director,
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]