National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program

Opportunity for Input on Establishing and Maintaining a
National Post-Earthquake Information Management System (PIMS)

NEHRP has established the creation and maintenance of a repository of important post-earthquake reconnaissance data as one of its Strategic Priorities that will be emphasized in its new Strategic Plan. FEMA is supporting some initial scoping of the requirements for such a system under the auspices of the Multihazard Mitigation Council's American Lifelines Alliance (ALA).

ALA hopes to develop a "road map" that will assist the NEHRP agencies in moving forward in developing and implementing a Post-earthquake Information Management System (PIMS). Although the NEHRP agencies do not have resources that can be immediately allocated for implementing PIMS, we believe that this road map will be helpful when it is time for the agencies to determine how to proceed.

The goal of the ALA effort is to identify both infrastructure requirements (e.g., data system architecture, technological needs and issues) and implementation requirements (e.g., facilities, expertise, policies, and funding) for PIMS. The ALA work is being conducted by the University of Illinois, and the principal investigators are Billie Spencer, Jr., Ph.D., P.E.; James D. Myers, Ph.D.; and Blake Andrews.

The road map that results is expected to identify PIMS requirements, delineate the steps that will need to be taken to create the system, estimate likely costs and levels of effort required for each development step, and provide an implementation schedule with milestones.

The ALA plans to define the breadth of data that needs to be accommodated by PIMS, as well as the types of data searching and collating features users would like to have (database searching, output format, GIS compatibility, etc.). In addition to drawing upon information provided in the 2003 Earthquake Engineering Research Institute report, Collection & Management of Earthquake Data: Defining Issues for an Action Plan (PDF 5MB), the ALA hopes that key stakeholders will provide information requirement summaries that:

• Identify key issues not currently addressed through existing post-earthquake investigations,
• Define the types of information that would be necessary to address those issues, and
• Determine what tools should be available for storing, presenting, analyzing, and disseminating that information.

The University of Illinois researchers are utilizing wiki technology to collect summaries of information needs and applications. This allows anyone to review and edit existing summaries or add a new summary. The site address is:

http://pims.ncsa.uiuc.edu/wiki/index.php/PIMS:Community_Portal

There are fairly detailed instructions available on the wiki site about its use, as well as existing information requirement summaries that can be reviewed.

We invite members of the earthquake professional community to explore the wiki site on their own and to provide any input they consider to be appropriate via the procedures outlined on the site. Anyone who has questions about using the site may contact Blake Andrews (bandrew3@ad.uiuc.edu), the University of Illinois Project Manager for the ALA work.

The ALA plans to convene a small workshop for reviewing and commenting on a draft of the PIMS plan in early summer.

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