Annual Meeting - SCEC.org

Poster Abstracts | Group 1 – ShakeOut
90 | Southern California Earthquake Center
ShakeOut
1-037
DELIVERING THE SHAKEOUT SCENARIO TO GOLDEN GUARDIAN Perry SC, and
Holbrook CC
The ShakeOut Scenario earthquake study was developed to meet the needs of end users,
particularly emergency management at Federal, State, and local levels, and the customization has
continued after initial publication. The Scenario was released in May, 2008, to a key planning
conference for November’s Golden Guardian Exercise series. According to long-standing
observers, this year’s Golden Guardian event is the biggest and most ambitious of their experience.
The scientific foundation has attracted a large number of participants and there are already
requests to continue using the Scenario in 2009 exercises. Successful exercises cover a limited range
of capabilities, in order to test performance in measurable ways, and to train staff without
overwhelming them. Any one exercise would fail if it attempted to capture all of the complexity of
impacts from a magnitude 7.8 earthquake. Instead, exercise planners have used the Scenario like a
magnifying glass to identify risk and capabilities most critical to their own jurisdictions.
Presentations by project scientists and a 16-page narrative provided an initial overview of the
Scenario. However, many planners were daunted in attempts to extract details from the project’s
300-page report, 12 supplemental studies, and 10 appendices, or in attempts to cast the reality into
straightforward “events” to drive successful exercises. Thus we developed an evolving collection
of documents that included an overview of how the earthquake would affect a specific jurisdiction
such as a county or military base; a distillation of Scenario damages and consequences pertinent to
that jurisdiction; and bullet lists of capabilities and situations to consider when planning exercises
under this Scenario. Moreover, some planners needed realistic extrapolations beyond posited
damages; others sought reality checks to uphold the science; yet others needed results in additional
formats. Through all this, it was essential to maintain flexibility, allowing planners to adjust
findings where appropriate (e.g., locations of smaller hazmat incidents), while indicating which
aspects of the Scenario could not be tweaked (e.g., the physics of aftershock simulations). Thus we
fielded questions, consulted in and out of meetings, and created a planners-only web site. The
results of these efforts have been exercises that use a richer, more detailed set of scientific findings;
and for future scenarios, an improved understanding of user needs.
1-038
HOPE FOR THE BEST, PREPARE FOR THE WORST: RESPONSE OF TALL STEEL
BUILDINGS TO THE M7.8 SHAKEOUT SCENARIO EARTHQUAKE Muto M, and
Krishnan S
Currently, there is a significant campaign being undertaken in southern California to increase
public awareness and readiness for the next large earthquake along the San Andreas Fault,
culminating in a large-scale earthquake response exercise. The USGS ShakeOut scenario is a key
element to understanding the likely effects of such an event. A source model for a M7.8 scenario
earthquake has been created (Hudnut et al. 2007), and used in conjunction with a velocity model
for southern California to generate simulated ground motions for the event throughout the region
(Graves et al. 2008). We were charged by the USGS to provide one plausible realization of the
effects of the scenario event on tall steel moment-frame buildings. We have used the simulated
ground motions with three-dimensional non-linear finite element models of three buildings (in two
orthogonal orientations and two different connection fragility conditions, for a total of twelve
cases) in the 20-story class to simulate structural responses at 784 analysis sites spaced at
approximately 4 km throughout the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley and the Los
Angeles Basin. Based on the simulation results and available information on the number and