[Shakecast-users] Public Release of USGS ShakeCast Update 2.0.4

[Kuo-Wan Lin]

Greetings,

This email is being sent to everyone who has registered as a user of 
ShakeCast, software that provides post-earthquake damage assessment 
shortly after they occur. On Tuesday, 10/28/2008, a new version (2.0.4) 
of the software will be released by USGS.

The new version continues to be a branch release based on the original 
software developed by the Gatekeeper Systems (Version 1) and is fully 
backward-compatible. It has several enhancements that hopefully will be 
of interest. Listed below are highlights of the new functionality of 
version 2.0.4.

1. Proxy support. ShakeCast will now work in environments that have 
restrictive firewalls that had previously prevented direct communication 
to the USGS web server. Comments and testing provided by Lu Dam of 
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Peter Li of U.S. 
Customs and Border Protection are greatly appreciated.

2. New ShakeMap metrics. The program now includes support for two new 
ShakeMap metrics, SDPGA (estimated uncertainty as PGA sigma ratio) and 
SVEL (Vs30 in m/s). User defined metrics such as Arias intensity and 
Newmark displacement, etc. will be introduced in the upcoming upgrades 
in conjunction with custom fragility modules.

3. ShakeMap Atlas. The program now includes direct access to the Atlas 
archive on the USGS web site. The Atlas of ShakeMaps provides a 
consistent and quantitative description of the distribution of shaking 
intensity for recent global earthquakes (January 1973 – September 2007 
for Version 1.0). Currently the list of earthquakes is ~950 and we are 
working to expand the inventory to eventually ~5000 that have been 
processed. Regular global ShakeMaps will be converted to ShakeMap Atlas 
on a regular (biannual) basis.

4. ROVER (Rapid Visual Screening for Potential Seismic Risk) support. 
ROVER produces viable ShakeCast input from pre-event building screening 
with hand-held computers during field inspections. ShakeCast now 
includes a new management script for importing facilities from the ROVER 
database. This allows building owners with ATC-154 defined inventory to 
directly import their facilities into ShakeCast. The script will assign 
a HAZUS model building type and associated fragility settings based on 
the available information. We would like to thank Keith Porter and ISTI 
to provide guidance on the conversion.

5. System message. This is a new message type that captures ranges of 
errors the program encountered. The content of the message covers 
identifiable errors from communication error with the USGS web server to 
grid processing. An administrator could subscribe himself/herself to 
receiving the message to stay informed regarding the state of health of 
the system.

6. Google Maps and Google Earth fun! The program now includes some 
example templates that will become local products after earthquakes. In 
addition to existing exposure file in XML and CSV, users can also find 
Google Earth KML output and a sample html page that utilizes the Google 
Earth plug-in API. Continuing updates to these templates are expected. 
Look-up and geocoding of facility location in latitude/longitude via 
Google Maps have been added to the facility management page. We would 
like to thank Loren Turner of Caltrans, who has contributed various ways 
in defining the required fields and their implementation.

7. Miscellaneous updates and bug-fixes:
- The new “scenario inject” option under the “USGS ShakeMap” page forces 
the ShakeCast processing of the event to be scenario despite of the 
nature of the ShakeMap. This option is strongly recommended when 
conducting local exercises.
-The new “delete” test events option helps purge the selected local test 
event from both the database and the file system.
-The new system function test script for conducting an end-to-end run of 
a ShakeCast process.
-The table column sorting routine has been switched from javascript to 
php. The multiple-column sorting function has been propagated to most pages.
-User notification requests and profile associations are now strictly 
separated. A user can not have both custom notifications and profiles at 
the same time. This bug-fix will eliminate missing notifications.

Detailed information of the revision and affected files are documented 
in the Revision History file after you have upgraded. We are always 
interested in feedback. Let us know what improvements you would like to 
see and we'll try to implement them.

Best regards,

Kuo-Wan Lin and David Wald
U.S. Geological Survey

P.S. You can maintain your account at
https://geohazards.usgs.gov/mailman/listinfo/shakecast-users

-- 
Kuo-Wan Lin
U.S. Geological Survey
DFC P.O. Box 25046, MS 966
Denver, CO 80225-0046

klin at usgs.gov
(O) 303-273-8563
(F) 303-273-8600