PEER is coordinating a new major multi-disciplinary multi-year research program to develop the Next Generation Attenuation Models for the Central & Eastern US ( NGA-East) with support from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), United States Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).
For the central & eastern US, the existing earthquake ground motion models constitute a major source of uncertainty for seismic hazard calculations and seismic design. During the NGA-East project, PEER and numerous researchers from across the US will collaborate to collect relevant international seismic data and coordinate numerous supporting research projects to develop the next generation ground motion models for the central & eastern US that will update and greatly improve the current models.
The NGA-East project is a follow up of a successful multi-institution, multi-investigator, multi-sponsor collaborative project called the Next Generation Attenuation Relationship for the western US (NGA-West) project which was coordinated over five years by PEER. The newly developed ground motion models for the western US have successfully met their objectives and have been adopted by the United States Geological Survey for the development of the latest version of the US National Seismic Hazard Maps.
The expected impact of the NGA-East project, similar to that for NGA-West, is enormous as almost all seismic design of engineering facilities ranging from power plants to buildings to bridges to lifelines will be affected by these ground motion models.
The NGA-East project started on October 1, 2008 and will continue for six years.
posted December 3, 2008
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