Over the last decade significant investments have gone into developing focused research facilities in the Earth sciences and engineering. Complementary efforts have continued to nurture the development of the expertise needed to make use of these individual facilities.   To discuss the combined capabilities of the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation ( NEES) consortium's  large-scale shakers (and other NEES components), and the diverse array of geophysical instrumentation available through the Incorporated Research Institutes for Seismology consortium (IRIS) and the USGS National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), IRIS sponsored a workshop, held April 29-30, 2004.  Following up on ideas aired during the workshop, a pilot field experiment will be conducted in the summer of 2004.    The primary objective of these activities is to begin to discover the full potential of a multi-facility approach to solving scientific and engineering problems - an approach that should yield information otherwise impossible to obtain. The particpant list now has grown to include the  Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), Los Alamos National Lab, and the Mid-America Earthquake (MAE)  Center as well. The workshop and experimentshould set precedents and provide data for future larger-scale multi-facility proposals and projects.   

Workshop: Scientists and engineers met during April 29-30, 2004 at the University of Texas at Austin's Conference Center and NEES facility in Austin.  Sessions covered: 1) Agency views of multi-facility science, 2) Scientific and engineering questions best addressed using multiple facilities. 3) Instrumentation ‘Show and Tell'. 4) Discussions/presentations of data processing and analysis tools. 5) Field experiment planning.  Presentations and photos are available by request (email gomberg@usgs.gov), and a written summary will be published soon. Participants came from a diversity of disciplines, with a wide range of expertises. Many thanks to IRIS!

Pilot Experiment: See the results!

Questions, Comments: Contact Joan Gomberg, gomberg@usgs.gov, 901-678-4858.