St. Louis Seismic Hazard Meeting
June 9, 2003
Introductions
Everyone present introduced himself or herself.
What’s needed to make a mapping effort useful/worthwhile in St. Louis?
Such an effort must involve the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council, which is a quasi-governmental St. Louis area group that guides planning, development, etc. A mapping effort should be used to convince them that IBC 2000 should be adopted.
The experience of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) showed that training of local constituencies was essential in getting the local citizenry to use seismic hazard maps in California. ABAG provided lots of 1-day workshops for a wide range of potential users.
Building officials must be involved from the very beginning.
What should be the scope of the maps?
There was agreement that the mapped area must cover a complete political entity or the maps wouldn’t get used. The St. Louis metropolitan area includes 29 quads; the general consensus was to try to map all these!
What’s been done to date?
Geologic surficial materials maps (to bedrock) for all the quads on the Illinois side of the metropolitan area have been produced by the Illinois State Geologic Survey; these are all digital and are based on field observations and all available boring and well logs, material physical properties, etc. Stack maps, or the 3-D variation in layer boundaries, have been constructed. Shear wave profiles have been measured in a few places, but more are needed. CPT data are also needed.
In Missouri, geologic surficial material maps exist only crudely for a few quads. Many boring logs have been collected but these are of highly variable quality, density, etc. No shear velocity profiles or CPT measurements exist.
What resources exist or might be cultivated?
USGS NEHRP may be able to fund a few projects. The USGS mapping program will fund Rich Harrison and Dave Moore each half time, and although this is mostly to work in the Evansville area they can spend a bit of time in St. Louis. However, the Missouri State Geologic Survey would prefer that USGS funds were given to Missouri geologists, rather than having USGS do the mapping.
The federal State Map and Ed Map programs may provide resources; in both programs the states can decide where to use money, but funds can only be used for basic mapping (not integration, etc.). Most of the Illinois mapping was done as part of the State Map program. The Ed Map funds also could be very useful for getting universities involved in the mapping.
The Missouri DOT has a seismic-CPT truck that might be used along major bridges, etc. They have been helpful in the past and might be engaged for this effort.
Who else might participate?
*Phyllis Steckel, Seismic Safety Commission Chair
*Renaldo Luna, Univ. of MO, Rolla
*Bob Herrmann, St. Louis University
*Nathan Gould, General manager of St. Louis ABS
*East-West Gateway – Martha Kopper.
*Sue Evers, FEMA region 7 (MO)
*Rich Roth, FEMA region 5 (IL)
*Peter Clogston, FHWA – Jefferson City
Tom Cooling, URS, chair of upcoming St. Louis EERI
Tom Roeseler, BofA contingency planner, ANSS-MA Advisory Council member, Missouri Seismic Safety Commission (thomas.roeseler@bankofamerica.com)
Bob Copper, Regional planning commission
Dave Snider, director of transportation version of CUSEC (dgsnider37@aol.com)
Someone from MoDOT (Jim Wilkinson will suggest who.)
Someone from IDOT
Tom Saad, FHWA -Chicago
Tom Hearn, AG Edwards
Someone from St. Louis EMA
Reps. from utilities: LaClede Gas, Metropolitan Sewer District
Mike Marx,AmerenUE (MO electrical utility), MO Seismic Safety Commission, (mmarx@ameren.com)
Someone from Scott Air Mobility Command Headquarters (Greg Hempen suggest who.)
Brad Cross, SIU Historic preservation expert
What next?
Another meeting will be scheduled for late August/early September in St. Louis, probably at St. Louis University. The primary objective of the meeting will be to set the stage for drafting a straw man plan of what to produce and how to accomplish it. Invitees will include participants at this meeting and some/all of those with asterisks above. Attendees should come prepared to identify specifically what data we have in hand, and what data and resources are needed.
Dave Hoffman, Dave Rogers, and Bob Bauer will find out about the potential for tapping into State and Ed map funds.