Technology Applications for Seismic Events

Jennifer Strauss, PhD
<b style=”font-size : 16px”>External Relations Officer
Berkeley Seismological Laboratory

Agenda 

6:30 Doors Open, Food & Networking
7:00 Presentation
*** Please arrive by 7 PM due to Security ***

Event Details

More often than not, earthquakes are associated with destruction, losses and general malaise rather than with new and exciting business opportunities. Sure, there are the makers of equipment to measure ground motion who make money, and seismic retrofitting of older structures can be a costly effort. Over the last decade UC Berkeley alone spend more than two billion dollars to make its campus more resilient against the inevitable earthquake shaking. But neither the retrofit nor the production of seismometers has the glamorous image of today’s high tech and smart technology. This, however, is about to change as early warning before earthquake shaking is slowly rolled out in California, along the entire US West Coast and elsewhere.

In this presentation, we will explore new apps like MyQuake and MyShake, which will bring earthquake education and alerts to your cell phone. We will outline new innovations such as coupling to GPS systems, weather radios, and mass communication systems and how the private sector can help push the technology forward. 

Speaker Bio

Jennifer Strauss is the head of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory’s Earthquake Research Affiliate Program, which fosters interactions between academic researchers and external partners interested in earthquake information services, including earthquake early warning (EEW) and novel technologies for geophysical research. Working with industry affiliates, legislators, and scientists on bringing an EEW system to the state of California, she also routinely interfaces with emergency managers to build action plans and strategies for hazard mitigation given a small lead time for earthquake warning. 

She joined the lab in November 2012, after spending three years in the French Alps. She is a Physicist by training, with a research history in powder diffraction, x-ray crystallography, computer modeling, and ice sheet dynamics and radar altimetry studies on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. She was a Co-Chair of the inaugural Postdoctoral Society of Argonne National Laboratory. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the Univ. of Texas at Austin in 2001 and a PhD from Stony Brook University in May 2007.

Standing nearly on top of the Hayward Fault, the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory (BSL) provides robust hazard information while engaging in essential geophysical research. Throughout the BSL’s long history of innovation (described below), beginning with the 1897 installation of the first seismograph in the western hemisphere, our commitment to probing the Earth’s deepest secrets has remained unchanged.

https://www.sfbayacm.org/event/technology-applications-seismic-events
Event page provided by ACM