TIC WG A, minutes from teleconference, April 6, 2004

Participants: Egill Hauksson, Paul Whitmore, David Oppenheimer,
Won-young Kim, Woody Savage, Mitch Withers.

The discussion primarily revolved around clarifying the charge
from the TIC and what exactly this group is to accomplish.

Does the charge include recommendations on the budgetary prioritization,
how proposals for specific structures should be handled for example.
Yes and no.  In a broad sense we are to provide a recommendation to
the TIC on what the system should be able to accomplish and this should
allow management to better prioritize.

The ANSS needs a practical plan that includes standards sensitive to
existing realities but with an eye toward the full-funding goals in
1188 and ofr 02-92 (TIC guidelines for implementation).

What's available now?

Need to identify performance issues that are most important.

It is rare to have valuable data from instrumented buildings but
at least freefield would be better than nothing.  In some cases
it may be preferable to cover more structures with fewer channels
rather than vice-versa.

San Simeon is a good example to review what improvements need to
be made.  Is it a priority to have a reliable shakemap or better
to understand where a shakemap is more reliable or less so.

The standards we're to develop could be viewed as a step function
of increasing desirability.  Then as planning and prioritization
move forward it will be possible to perform triage.

There was a metric applied to estimate appropriate station density
(free field strongmotion) in circular 1188.  Do we need to do that
again?  No, that is a level of detail that this group need not go
into but rather decide standards for products which certainly would
impact specifics like station density.  Though we do need to be
practical and not make standards that require unrealistic specifics
such as unrealizable station density.

Metrics will be used such as speed and accuracy of earthquake location
which will be different at dense local and broader national levels.
Also depends on the consumer and the product.  Other groups are addressing
specific products.

What minimum levels of performance can be expected.  What constitutes
a better level or a subminimum.

Need to define products.  To a large extent, this is already done
in the TIC document in chapter 6.

Withers to put Lam white paper on performance assessement on the web.

It isn't obvious that the WG A title on www.anss.org/tic is a hotlink.

Withers will start circulating a charts of performance issues and products.
This should be developed in the context of the existing background
documentation.

Don't forget distribution.  Products serve no purpose if they don't get
to the people who use them.

Next call tentatively scheduled for April 26, 1-2pm EDT (same time).