please witnesses may be seated while come everyone this is the third in a series of hearings the subcommittee has held on programs that address threats to our communities including wind fire and earthquake we will hear today that the national earthquake hazards reduction program or neither has made many significant strides in enhancing earthquake safety and is a valuable program however the subcommittee has also found that federal agencies currently have a stovepipe approach to hazardous mitigation research activities separate and distinct programs exist for earthquake tsunami fire and when threats despite areas of commonality such as prediction research emergency preparedness needs and the potential for mitigation via enhanced construction codes even more importantly the key to successful mitigation of any and all potential hazards is a coordinated and effective public education program the statistics tell the story in the united states wind and fire cause approximately twenty eight billion dollars worth of damage and kill an average of four thousand three hundred americans each year earthquakes while more episodic can be devastating in their impact the one thousand nine hundred four north northridge earthquake took fifty nine lives and resulted in over four hundred billion dollars in damage i think we can all agree that we can and must do a better job of hazard mitigation in order to protect our communities as much as possible from the devastation of natural disasters one question we can raise is whether the current structure of federal hazards research is and how we could improve it the two thousand and four changes to need her have been widely supported nest via the leadership of dr jack case has received high marks for its coordination of the program we must note that research for other hazards has yet to produce similar advances this lag may exist because when fire do not have the same federal r and d structure that has produced our many advances on the seismic front today we will hear from experts on needs for the national earthquake hazards reduction program but i also hope to learn  program structured like need her also improve wind fire and tsunami research programs it is worth exploring whether a coordinated comprehensive and fully funded hazard mitigation program could be more effective approach than the current stovepipe structure where different hazards where different hazards communities fight for their own funding priorities and lessons learned are less likely to be shared between those researching different threats in the end the goal of research on all hazards earthquakes when fire and tsunami is the same to save lives protect our communities and preserve property i want to thank our witnesses for appearing before us today and now i would like to turn to the gentleman from nebraska mr smith for his opening statement thank you mr chairman and thank you for holding this hearing today to consider reauthorization of the national earthquake hazard reduction program otherwise known as knee her all natural hazards be they floods wildfires tornadoes hurricanes earthquakes and my district close to home yesterday and hail present a common mitigation challenge in that while inevitable and potentially catastrophic  are infrequent and certainly unpredictable these characteristics are particular pronounce for damaging earthquakes which are rare and impossible to predict on any practical time scale this in frequency has a tendency to drive stakeholders at all levels to become complacent and allow attention to earthquake hazard reduction efforts fade in favor of more pressing and urgent matters none the less we know that damage from a major us earthquake could cost tens of billions of dollars or more and that scientists are forecasting a ninety nine percent chance that california will experience a major earthquake six point seven magnitude or greater within the next thirty years these figures serve as a stark reminder that we should remain committed to reducing our vulnerability to earthquakes as an ounce of mitigation could be worth a pound of cure in the form of reducing loss of life and property when the so called big one hit to this and i want to commend nist in the participating the her for their efforts to strengthen the coordination and visibility of new york in recent years and i think initiating this review process this year in order to keep the program authorized without interruption our witnesses today represented diversity of backgrounds and expertise reflective of the breadth of the need her program and hazard mitigation in general and i look forward to hearing their recommendations on how best to further improve the program and leverage its resources most effectively thank you thank you mr smith if there are other members who wish to submit opening statements your statements will be added to the record at this point and now it is my pleasure to introduce our witnesses dr jack hayes is the director of the national earthquake hazard reduction program at the national institute of standards and technology mr  kenneth murphy is the immediate past president of the national emergency management association and the director of the oregon office of emergency management professor thomas is the thomas breaks professor of engineering at the school of civil and environmental engineering at cornell university dr michael bell is the professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at texas a and m university and finally dr james robert harris is the president of j r harris and company dr if you would please begin your written statement will be fully entered into the record and if you could please try to summarize your written statement into a five minute oral statement d chairman were ranking member smith and members of the subcommittee thank you for inviting me to testify on the reauthorization of the national earthquake has reduction program as you have said my testimony focuses on the four agency me her partnership nest and u s g s this partnership works closely with the earthquake community including other federal agencies state and local governments professional organizations model building code and standards organizations an earthquake professionals in the private sector and academia seismologist strongly agree that damaging earthquakes in the u s are inevitable and unpredictable this april a magnitude six point three earthquake in italy that cost three hundred lives and last year magnitude seven point nine earthquake in china the cost tens of thousands of lives are sobering reminders that unexpected tragedies can occur the establishment of new york was predicated on the belief that earthquakes are inevitable but  coordinating committee has significantly improved program visibility decisionmaking and coordination the advisory committee provides nationally renowned earthquake professional expertise to assist the coordinating memory committee members in establishing program direction in two thousand and eight the new york based in seeds released a new strategic plan that sets a new program vision a nation that is earthquake resilient in public safety economic strength and national security the plan sets three broad systems both in the us and worldwide in the us monitoring relies upon national seismic system the national earthquake information center assimilates monitoring the dial on a twenty four seven basis issues rap reports of earthquakes and their impacts in two thousand and eight u s g s released national seismic hazard maps that incorporate the most recent feel observation and research results and are being used to develop design maps for national model building codes knees providing world class experimental facilities at fifteen u s academic institutions with the accompanying cyber infrastructure nice provides a platform for collaborative earthquake engineering research education and  links n s f basic research with themas implementation activities nist is rebuilding its earthquake engineering research capabilities to bridge the research to implementation the nist program supports earthquake engineering practice and building code development with the survey to incorporate new hazard mapping into recommended building code provisions also provides technical and financial assistance to the states and the multi state consortia to increase earthquake awareness and to support training for state and local officials in summary there is still much to be learned about earthquakes and their impacts this is true in both the scientific deals and in the engineering disciplines what we know highlights a continuing need for greater preparedness and mitigation if the new her vision for the nation is to be realized before neopagan sees how a strong partnership both among themselves and with the nation's earthquake professional community we intend to strengthen these partnerships while looking towards the future this concludes my remarks sir and i am happy to answer helps states prepared for earthquakes specific hazards therefore kyriazis i want to highlight today challenges faced by emergency managers in preparing communities for earthquakes and other natural hazards supportive reauthorize ation of the new year program differences in preparing for hazards and tools and technologies for emergency managers the challenges we face emergency managers are numerous challenges at each level of government and the private sector i would be remiss if i did not state for the record that financial assistance to address earthquake hazards has been always has been and always will be a challenge each state city county tribal nation and territory must deal with either consistent disasters such as hurricanes or wildfires which usually provide greater emphasis and support to be prepared for these types of events or they have to deal with very infrequent disasters which lead to a lack of preparedness which usually direct campuses to other issues that are relevant and must be dealt with earthquakes are high consequent infrequent events that are often difficult to gain attention as you stated mr chairman the northridge earthquake with the death of the injuries the billions of dollars just happens in a few minutes the national earthquake hazard reduction program provides funding allowing for effective practices and policies to earthquake loss reduction and accelerations or implementation this program currently authorized one hundred ninety one million for fiscal year two thousand and nine authorization expires in september of this year proves techniques to reduce seismic vulnerability of soul of these and systems of occasion and risk assessments methods and their use and improve the understanding of earthquakes and their effects we think the program mu remain single really focused on earthquakes seem a should maintain a need here program uses for all four phases of emergency management preparedness response recovery and mitigation beamish it also ensure the program maintains a state focus and a multi two thousand and five and appreciate the emergency management is represented on that committee and hope that committee continues and her plan and activities do align with local governments need her visible during the reauthorize ation should be given to focus on specific geographic areas which would be a great benefit to the local needs and preparedness activities while need her because of valuable program for emergency managers it's difficult sometimes to track the program's funding year to year since a program shared by four separate agencies and often buried in operational accounts for these agencies having a clear line item for neither would assist in the tracking of the funds for the program and gain more visibility before congress the ministration stakeholders at the state and local level who are charged with preparing for  technological expertise for the program earthquakes first other hazards the most significant issue concerning earthquakes the earthquakes or no notice disasters many other disasters do provide some type of advance notice and warning not all similar to other disasters emergency managers really do not know how severe or how long an earthquake will last earthquakes must be planned for for the worst case scenario has emerged the responses will not know exactly who is alive who was injured how geographical areas tools and technology in preparing for earth quakes is important to have tools such as the hazards program which is a modeling tool from fema but i believe this tool needs more refinement and to be specific for earthquakes and  allowing more specific modeling for each jurisdiction allowing governments to better implement preparedness response and recovery in mitigation programs geologists and seismologists need more research into the prediction of earthquakes and more sensors in the grounds to give us  warning and scientific data on earth's movement during earthquakes applied research that is sponsored in part by any herb and its agencies eventually lead to these advancement of exciting new technologies such as early warning earthquake systems which are vitally important to protect human life and critical infrastructure as well as guiding response efforts and conclusion naima supports the need her reauthorize ation and look forward to working with the committee to enhance the program have any questions just sure i'll be available thank you very much mr murphy professor thank you very much mr chairman and also ranking member smith and members of the subcommittee i'm very happy to be here to testify today this first slide by the way illustrates elbow a boulevard after the one thousand nine hundred four northridge earthquake in los angeles you'll see in this picture the ground failure here has ruptured high pressure gas and water transmission pipelines and those houses that you're looking at were literally burned from the top and flooded from the bottom twenty five percent of the water supply was lost in los angeles the consequence of that earthquake and as you have mentioned before there were billions of dollars of damage the national earthquake hazards reduction program is the backbone of u s seismic protection and the risks are high the risks are high because the population and assets in earthquake vulnerable areas growing in the united states near provides a support base for seismic monitoring mapping research testing code development mitigation emergency preparedness but i think what's also equally important is that it serves as an incubator for technology for procedures and policy that go beyond earthquakes to reduce risk from all natural hazards and human threats it's become a very important contributor to the technologies and the reduction of risks in all natural hazards interagency coordination the two thousand  reauthorization of need her called for a number of changes in the program nist is the lead agency interagency coordinating committee advisory committee for earthquake hazard reduction in the strategic plan all of these have really supported and enhanced the  interagency coordination and i'm a member as so is my glendale to my left and jim harris are members of the advisory committee for thwaite hazard reduction i think we all feel that the interagency coordination with the new reauthorization has really gone forward and is looking very good support for nist which is the lead agency because it's a lead agency it's a it's really in control and overseeing a vast portfolio a large portfolio of different programs yet the support for this right now only accounts for about one point four percent of the inactive near budget for fiscal two thousand and eight i think and the many other people do too that that increased effort at nist and additional support is a very important part of supporting the interagency coordination because as lead agency they need the support and the resources to do be able to do their job effectively engineering  research and development priorities include lifeline systems these are the systems that that really distinguish modern communities they bring us energy they bring us transportation water supply communications particular looking at the  interdependencies in the national impact social behavioral aspects of community response to earthquakes is actually important for engineering because actually the real infrastructure of the communities that the physical infrastructure serve so getting a proper coordination is important performance based seismic design non doctor concrete and other buildings with life safety threats there are also two important programs one of them is the advanced national seismic system operated by the u s geological survey calling for six thousand new stations to monitor a strong motion concentration on urban areas and defining urban risks and then real time shake maps the georgie brown jr network for earth quake engineering simulation represents a tremendous opportunity for improving civil infrastructure for be able to show new emerging technologies and to be able to provide the evidence that's necessary for their implementation with fifteen sites across united states access worldwide and by a whole number of different users this is one of the gems of the earthquake program and certainly deserves support technology transfer need her post been very effective in developing codes and standards and fema has been the key agency for tech transfer and implementation it's important to recognize that theme again has only been  enacted for about twenty six percent of its authorization and so as a key agency for tech transfer and implementation we think that support should be increased so they could do there are their jobs more effectively it's also i think important to revitalize the fema state earthquake programs and provide for mitigation funds supporting thema at authorized levels is the most effective way to promote technology transfer and then natural hazards r and d there's been a recent report by the earthquake engineering research institute which is shown here i have copies for both german move and mr smith but this report documents the strong need her as the best way to support natural hazards mitigation there are many many contributions from me here hazards mitigation which are listed here and explained in detail in the report and then finally natural hazards r and d one of the things to do to bring a r and d program for natural hazards that would include all hazards is to seek expert advice from the national academies through the national research council this is a complex area with lots of different disciplines and a study by the national academies could be very effective in providing guidance on a good program multi hazzards demonstration projects some of them are being  led by u s g s in southern california further development of those would be very useful and then interaction between each herb in the national wind storm impaction reduction program with nist perhaps as the lead agency would be a good step towards being able to develop more coordination among the different hazards so the way forward is a strong need her support and her support that's consistent with authorized levels and that we think is the highest priority investment in disaster resilient communities and then of course the improved hazards coordination through a n r c study multi hazards demonstration projects and interaction between earthquake and wind storm communities perhaps with nist as the lead agency thank you very much thank you very much professor of research on natural hazards and the national academy of sciences committee on disaster research in the social sciences i'd like to address the first question what is the role of social science research in making communities has a resilient by noting that one of the second assessment committees concluded that households and businesses typically are unaware of the risks they face they underestimate the risks of which they are aware and overestimate their ability to cope when does as strikes these limitations lead them to encroach into high hazard areas underutilized pre impact has mitigation and preparedness and rely too much on post impact emergency response and disaster relief thus the role of social to better understand the psychological social economic and political causes of community has a vulnerability second we want to scientifically test possible ways to increase has resilience third we seek to work with other disciplines to disseminate administrative as well as technological innovations that increase community has a resilience regarding the second question how has social science been integrated into activity in other federal hazards r and d i want to say that the cornerstone of ne her support for social science has research over the past decades has been the n s f engineering directorate either alone or in collaboration with its social behavior and economic sciences directorate in addition u s g s and fema have supported research and dissemination of social science findings regarding the third question what are the priorities for social reauthorization of need her and other federal hazards already programs i want to discuss priorities in three areas hazard vulnerability analysis preamp ect actions and post impact actions regarding hazard vulnerability analysis the major social science question is which population segments and economic sectors are most vulnerable to disasters and what are their points of vulnerability and what can government and non governmental organizations do to reduce this vulnerability we've already identified vulnerable population segments but we need to learn more about the specific difficulties they have in hazard mitigation emergency preparedness disaster recovery and insurance purchase generally we need to know more about businesses and how their vulnerability varies by economic sector and what specific difficulties they experience addressing these questions through launch toodle studies to track households and businesses over time will tell us how government and non governmental organizations can more effectively provide assistance with regard to pre impact actions we know that households and businesses are not taking adequate levels of preamp act action and we have some explanations for why this is so in some cases the solution is to invest in risk communication programmes but we still have much to learn about how to persuade people to prepare for low probability high impact events such as earthquakes in addition research is needed to determine how to design extrinsic inducement programs incentives and sanctions so they provide the greatest increase in community resilience for the minimum cost to government and non governmental organizations in particular we need large scale coordinated field experiments that involve collaboration between communities that are willing to adopt innovative programs and social scientists who will evaluate these programs with regard to preempt or excuse me post impact actions this country made a major commitment after nine eleven to implement the incident command system i see as is a major improvement over the multiplicity of idiosyncratic systems that it is displacing but it deserves systematic evaluation to assess its limitations and identify improvements in the more than thirty years since its inception there's only been a handful of them purple studies on its effectiveness and a program that the federal government mandates for local governments to qualify for disaster reimbursement should be examined more thoroughly than that we know that communities recover more rapidly if they engage in pre impact recovery planning but most wait until after a disaster strikes to plan for their recovery as a consequence recovery is slow stakeholders are frustrated and hazard mitigation is poor integrated into the recovery process that systematic social science is needed in this area also finally i strongly endorse efforts to promote a multi hazard approach to increasing community resilience over the past thirty years i've done research in floods volcanic eruptions volcanic hazards of facilities in transportation toxic chemical facilities earthquakes hurricanes in tsunamis although there are findings that are specific to each of these hazards there are many commonalities that would provide multi hazard research with an opportunity to achieve extremely beneficial outcomes that would reinforce the findings in different hazards thank you as because old habits die hard and that's a fact of life i'm a structural engineer my business is designing structures mainly buildings to be useful and economical to their owners and to be safe for their users and the general public rip impacts what i do and how well i achieve those objectives of my service i'm also a member of an affiliated with several organizations that are deeply interested in the success of them including the structural engineering institute of the american society of civil engineers the applied technology council that makes me society the american concrete institute the american institute steel construction the building seismic safety council and the advisory committee that tom mentioned earlier my opinions are certainly informed and affected by all of those affiliations but my opinions should be taken as my own statements that are not really indorsed by any organization with regard to how the fared since the last reauthorization and the chain that were made i believe the level of interagency coordination has improved and the effectiveness of the program is beginning to show the result of that improvement in large measure this is due to the work of dr john hayes the selected to become the director of the program in their agency but of course he could not succeed without the backing of senior management at nist i have observed agencies working together on the new strategic plan for north and i have been impressed that they did collaborate strongly in putting that plan together it appears to me that the interagency coordinating committee is a key element of making that cooperation effective and i encourage congress to maintain the emphasis that the highest levels of management in each of the agencies be committed to the program i do want to note my appreciation for the leadership team offered to the program in the past their focus on implementation of mitigation measures is very close to my central focus and i think europe is been singularly successful over the years there are opportunities for improvement one obvious issue is that the appropriated funding of the program should reach the authorized levels i appreciate that arriving at a federal budget is an awesome task but i do want to note that the appropriated funds are less than either the authorized amounts or the proposed funding of the president's budget for a foil nine did you plan lays out a very ambitious program but it does not contain budgets the authorized funding levels provide a base level to work towards the goals of that plan and any smaller amounts will simply delay progress another opportunity for improvement is to either deepen the command of the deep commitment of d h s to unnerve or to enhance the ability of the earthquake program at fema to carry out its mission within that large and developing organization that is  s with regard to the priorities for r and d funding i certainly support the priorities set forth in the strategic plan for improving earthquake resilience of communities that's one of the overarching goals of that plan it's not possible to achieve that goal without effective technology transfer that is certainly close to my heart the continued implementation of an expanded coordinated program of problem focused research and development in earthquake engineering started at nist in two thousand and eight in response to strong recommendations from industry is a key feature of this technology transfer the recommended program include systematic support of the seismic code development process development of resources and tools to improve seismic design construction productivity another high priority item is continuing fema the fema funded program to develop next generation performance based seismic design guidelines for new and existing  buildings and there is a program planned i want to make reference to a publication prepared with the assistance of the s s c called research required to support full implementation of performance based seismic design i want to highlight that to you as a high priority or indeed about the multi hazard issue as a structural engineer i'm required to consider many natural hazards in the conduct of my practice earthquake wind snow flood ice and expansive soils all can have a significant effect on the designs that i prepare for the role of the federal government in r and d is quite varied across these areas earthquakes are a prime example of a situation that requires a strong federal effort to make progress towards disaster resilience and repositioning example of a successful federal program in my view the needs are not the same across the spectrum of hazards but there are certainly unfulfilled needs on the engineering design side earthquake is on li t snow flood or ice that calls for a lot more support of engineering r and b in the earthquake area on the natural hazard definition side the differences do not appear to me to be as significant and the whole idea of predicting the future from observation of the past is in the best tradition of strong science the rarity of the earthquake events certainly make it an interesting problem i want to note that a recent survey of practicing engineers pointed to the wind load provisions a standard that i'm deeply involved with which is the root of the building code provisions for structural safety it's called minimum design loads for buildings and other structures it's published under the symbol the seven that survey pointed to the wind provisions being very difficult to understand more so than the seismic design provisions even though conceptually there are considerably more difficult design provisions or tribute at least a part of that discrepancy to because there is no equivalent of  c out there for wind in general and b s a c in no small measure has made our seismic design provisions all that much better so overall i want to compliment the congress for keeping going i want you to encourage you to continue to do that  hayes many bouquets and accolades happen thrown your way and nervous way in this hearing and through other reports so let me ask you about something that you may or may not be doing correctly which is that there has been some testimony that the level of support for managerial and technical activities at nest that expanding that level of support sir first let me thank you for the accolades but they're not that well deserved this is a teamwork operation that we have and it involves partners from the other three agencies that are sitting behind me now and without them this wouldn't all really happy that this year in the two thousand and nine budget we did see a very meaningful increase of about two and a half million dollars two point four million dollars to be exact in the new research budget for supporting earthquake research and we're in the process now of doing a couple of things one is that we are working very diligently to rebuild the earthquake engineering workforce and we've hired a couple of folks already and are looking to hire other people this summer and fall we also have a contract support this man very helpful for us as well and i think we're making really good headway towards  g improve size and scope for the program through the funding that came came this year and we anticipate seeing a gradual growth process i think it would be unwise to do  it all overnight if you will anyway i think we have to be smart about the way we grow back into things and we're very diligently doing that as we speak right now interviewing people trying to find good good people for the team so kinds of disasters and two different disasters of the same kind could you address this a little bit of a couple of examples about lessons learned and what and whether whether this might might tsunami wave and that there are some differences but there are some similarities and so the foundation of a project that was funded by the national science foundation was to integrate some of the ideas that we had learned about how to evacuate from hurricanes there's been a lot of research on hurricane evacuation over the years not so much in the case of tsunamis and so it was an opportunity to take what local emergency planning committee i did a study of local emergency planning committees in indiana illinois and michigan provided a lot of ideas about how to improve community emergency preparedness for earthquakes as well so those are just two examples but like i said there are many others as  successful but that doesn't mean it is universally successful in terms of affecting building codes cities and states across the nation the path to those building codes are somewhat torturous path if you will almost all building codes or laws of cities or in some cases of states almost all of those make reference to a model building there is one predominant model building code in this country called the international building code with respect to the seismic safety issues as well as most other structural concerns that model building codes makes reference to lots of structural engineering standards in other words the safety provisions are really in the building code there in the referenced standards the standard i mentioned earlier the as the seven standards sets forth the loading side of it and then there are lots of standards produced by other entities that set forth how you design in a given material whether it be steel concrete masonry or timber for example the the great success of the north program it with respect to implementation i think there has been famous long and consistent support of the building seismic safety council which is a forum that brings together all of the stakeholders that are interested in how seismic safety is probably gated through building  codes it turns out that that one national organization with fifty or sixty organizational members doesn't necessarily sure when that group agrees that something ought to be done doesn't necessarily assure that every city is going to adopt it and there are cities here and there that are i think for good reasons dragging their feet on moving into the best current practice for seismic safety these are cities where the seismic hazard is high therefore the cost of compliance is high but the experience of earthquakes in human lifetime isn't there because the event is such a rare event and specifically i talk about the middle mississippi valley area and it is a serious concern as to how we best protect places like this where the event is so rare that a person of a decision making age has never experienced an earthquake nor is he related by blood to anyone who has who is still alive and you're talking about the interplay then of social science with technical sciences physical sciences and it's a difficult sell i think the program is doing a good job it is not heavy handed it is relying upon a consensus in these standards bodies the model code building process has a semblance of that i think the program has been more successful than any other federal program i'm aware of in terms of bringing improved safety levels to bear more or less and generally across the nation it's not a battle that's one that has to continue to be f where both fortunate to claim new york is our work and i just had a question of you as one in the area of civil engineering as to how you interact with researchers who are dealing with social the social sciences of the research that needs to be done how is that interaction put together i can give you some examples for a number of years we actually had support from the national science foundation to work with social scientists at the wagner school of public service in new york city this was a group of engineers but primarily social scientists who were in city planning this applied social sciences with respect to decision making and and that i think led to a lot of very interesting insights and some excellent opportunities to reach out to people in urban environments and begin to formulate approaches  that would allow us to number one from the engineering and scientific side become aware and informed about the social dimensions of our technologies you know it's one thing for us to be able to invent a new process or to propose a new development or piece of infrastructure but it's quite another thing for the communities to accept that because there's quite a lot of disruption there's quite a lot of interference with the  normal activities and frankly the lack of this coordination between social science and engineering and science hard science was actually getting in the way of getting important civil infrastructure projects put into place in a timely fashion and so there's been a number of more effective ways of approaching this dialogue just being able to support a continuing dialogue between the engineering professions and the social science professions has been extraordinarily important for in lightning both groups because you have to pay some serious translational fees when you try to find common language across both sides but the final product has been i think exceptional and very helpful for putting civil infrastructure in place i made a comment before that that real civil infrastructure are the communities the actual people that benefit from the physical infrastructure so unless we can bring those two together we're not really doing it in the holistic and correct way and are there major impediments to that interaction that you believe we need to address in order to make the the work more effective yes there are for example there are institutional impediments if you look at civil infrastructure it's actually if you want to use the word balkanized you will have water supply and power  telecommunications with with entirely different corporate cultures different reward systems different agenda and so getting everybody to sort of sing in the same choir and getting everybody to coordinate  process is an extraordinarily important part of getting this job done we don't depend on just one system at a time we don't just rely on water supply for fire following a major disaster like an earthquake or a world trade center disaster we don't just depend upon electric power we depend upon them all concomitantly and at the same time and therefore dealing with the interdependencies both physical interoperation and institutional becomes a very very important part of how we proce thank you and dr harris you had in earlier questioning you had spoken to disasters that have huge amounts of wind related to them i'm assuming that when speed maps become critical when it comes to design who do you rely upon is never there to provide these these bits of data or how to how simply do you get the the the details that you need the maps that you may need for wind speed thank you for your question the nerve actually doesn't have anything to do with the maps that we use for wind speed they're produced in a in a committee by volunteers a committee  american society of civil engineers these volunteers have they make extensive use of data that is compiled in something called the national climatic center which is related to know and the national weather service and but the analysis of the data is pretty much purely done by volunteers who put this map together responding to overall committee decisions on how safe is safe proposed in the national wind hazard impact was a reduction program would i think it would become more sophisticated and a better overall program probably a more intelligent expenditure of construction dollars i think it would reduce costs in some areas  would increase cost and others because the safety level would become more consistent thank you thank you mister thank the gentleman from new york gentleman from nebraska is recognized  obviously always has a lot on their plate it seems and with the so called moving target of geography of disasters and the velocity of disasters it's certainly i don't want to criticize  i would you believe there are ways to reestablish a good distinct focus on earthquake mitigation within fema without compromising this all hazards and mission and approach within the h s absolutely i think in order to make any hazard mitigation effect you have to get down to the community level and that's where the implementation occurs and seen the frankly has been quite effective in being able to reach out to the communities as invasion within the implementation or the group that works through the codes and standards process there's a group that develops hazardous which is applied at the local community level and they're the folks that come in and work with the states and multi state organizations and so forth  d for the state program since about two thousand and three as has been subsumed into a broader sort of the h s approach to things and there's been kind of a loss of identity during that period of time on the part of the state managers a mitigation and earthquake programs we believe that those programs were very effective because they were targeted that people did have an identity they were able to get access to resources that made them affective and that  putting more emphasis on the state programs and in particular for mitigation programs within the states targeted earthquakes is a good idea that that it doesn't necessarily compete with other hazards that it fits into a jigsaw puzzle as a complimentary piece of support with other types of hazards and and actually it's a kind of a natural so we say stimulus for support in other hazards area and i'll give you an example when when has this which is this computer decision system that is very effective in helping communities understand the impacts of natural hazards in their in their their their local jurisdictions was originally created was created for earthquakes but since then it has been extended to floods and to wind storm effects so starting from the incubation of this particular technology furth quakes it is been able to be developed and applied to other locations thank you and then  dr harris if you might respond certainly there's a lot of discussion lately about carbon footprint and the impact of carbon emissions and do you see any of these efforts perhaps compromising building codes along the way if if they were applied in an unthinking fashion that might be the case but in reality the carbon footprint is with respect to the topics we're talking about are the building the infrastructure that is the most resilient that you don't have to reconstruct after every natural disaster and it does mean in some cases spending more money and more carbon in the initial construction because it pays off in the long run if you look at the the the carbon footprint issue as a true life cycle cost then i don't think there are conflicts if it gets narrowed to just carbon then perhaps there are conflicts i appreciate your response i hear you saying there may need to be some flexibility and that we should look beyond perhaps just that first carbon footprint and what might happen down the road i concur that is the flexibility that's necessary thank you very much and the chairman recognize some south dr hayes testify that nurse has almost thirty years worth of experience of interaction with state and local government other earthquake professionals  which has provided a good deal of organizational experience that can be shared with those working in other hazard fields what lessons are the lessons learned from earthquakes and and how can these lessons be extended to other hazard fields i probably won't think of all of them there are many similarities and there are some just similarities and we have to distinguish between the two but i think dr lindale testified earlier one of the major areas of  possible commonality is in the disaster preparation and response and recovery that that really involves many activities that are very similar irrelevant it's irrelevant what the hazard might be there are lifeline systems of a community that is impacted by any natural disaster whether it's a flood tsunami earthquakes wildfires where one system is impacted that then effects another system is another area that has many areas of common interest looking specifically within the structural world we certainly see that there are some similarities with with wind effects but not close similarities between when the backs and an earthquake affects there are things that can be learned there and again looking more narrowly at structural engineering if we look at what we call progressive collapse which in effect is a  cascading effect there are similarities there as well when a structural element fails it almost doesn't matter really what the original impetus was because that failure to occur if things start spreading throughout a structure and so there are similarities there is support of our public education and morning campaigns i think the most significant thing is you know mr chairman there's not a whole lot of time and i'm not a whole lot of space on the oregon coast and i'll only speak from our area but public education not only to the citizens but the visitors to states that may not be familiar so i think those types of programs and the financial support to help us makes a huge difference and i think that would apply to  not necessarily for us but through the science to help us know as soon as we can about it or the potential resulting after effects i think the science is very important and i know i've learned a great deal from our view ologist our seismologist our civil engineers you know in using those to try and predict through has been mentioned here the modeling system you know i think the continued support and hopefully increasing support in those areas will help us do a better job as emergency managers try to prepare for it and whether it's in the preparation mode or the response or recovery mode any of those type of tools that has provided or can different forms of data that they collect they may collect photographs they may collect high resolution satellite imagery they may collect observations they may collect actual information about the subsurface soil conditions  these then become somewhat extraordinarily complex as the information starts to come in and the intention of course is not to have this information just available to a few individuals who are experts in the area but to make it generally available to the community at large and ultimately to the community that's been affected or may be affected by the next event and it's not a trivial task to try to take all of these disparate sources of information and interger ate them into a system where people can get access that there are appropriate method data which are our data that allow them to identify where the specific information is that they're looking for and to create that in a user friendly way the the earthquake immune i think as has kind of led the group in terms of acquiring information after disasters and have experimented with a number of i think very exciting technologies one of the areas that they piloted has been the use of high resolution satellite imagery that's been tied into g p s systems on the ground so that as people acquire information as they travel through earthquake stricken areas or disaster affected areas this information is immediately integrated into the satellite view of things and then is then integrated by advanced to geo graphical information systems into a whole series of databases which are map base and this was done for quakes in the one thousand nine hundred early two thousand and actually has been very effective in acquiring information after ways of collecting and cataloguing that information for access by others and then who would be responsible for implementation that's an integrated role and i would look to the integration of posters quake information to the lead agency which would be nist because that would be the natural place to place that type of oversight and i know that nist in the previous year has actually supported some workshops that have been focused on trying to acquire and fema has been also part part of this of course team of course is important because of the implementation part of it ultimately as i mentioned before one of the important apply cations for this information is in the actual community where the where the problems have occurred when you have to reconstruct after a major earthquake like northridge or you have to reconstruct after a major hurricane like katrina you need to have this type of information with the planners and the civil engineers and the public utilities and the communities so that they have that data available to do the most effective job in reconstructing your argument sounds what it feels like it would provide some good preventative therapy to the response that would be required in situations that would follow up to those given circumstances absolutely mr murphy you shared the thought that perhaps we should look at geographic looking at trying to focus it on where there's clear evidence like the new matter of earthquake ball which runs through the central united states including eight states out of my part of the united states the  alaska washington oregon and northern california and we have clear good empirical data of possible you know that we try and focus the money and efforts you know to help in those areas that you know clearly have evidence and that we can spend the time whether it's in preparedness mitigation response or recovery to focus that effort towards those geographical areas and thank the gentleman dr harris given the number and magnitude of the frequency of wind related disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes why do these when related disasters receive comparatively it seems less attention in codes and in the standards development process and and what is the wind equivalent of the building seismic safety coun the engineering problem is actually approached in a different fashion the nature of the earthquake action on a structure allows one to take advantage of certain kinds of damage and  still protect life at the at the risk of losing substantial dollars of constructed inventory but when one does a cost benefit analysis that makes sense so what it means then from the engineering side is that the solution of a design to resist an earthquake is a very complicated problem the solution to designing a structure to resist wind or in fact any low that is is related to gravity snow on the roof occupancy within the in the structure and so on a much simpler approach is taken effectively it's the difference between  under let's say a college education and a postgraduate education in terms of the level of sophistication of the structural design that that has driven the need for an extensive r and d program in earthquake engineering if you will not necessarily has or definition in the engineering side of it that we haven't had to have for when the there's less attention paid if you will in building codes and building code development processes to the wind problem than there is to the earthquake problem but in the in the end it turns out that it's to our all it's to all of our detriment it turns out that the provisions we have are not as clear and easy to understand they don't have the the same i think depth of technical consensus behind them that we do in the earthquake world the equivalent to b s s c four wind is in fact a subcommittee of this seven committee that produces a standard on minimum design laws for buildings and other structures there are roughly thirty to forty highly qualified professionals involved in that volunteer committee and they do what b s s does if you will but for when they produce the map they produce the provisions the fact that it's a volunteer effort means that it is just it doesn't doesn't receive the same attention what dr harris this is stunning what you're saying is that because it's a simpler problem and easier problem wind resistance and codes concerning resistance receive less attention than seismic research and resistance to seismic stress even though on a per dollar basis it might be and per life basis it might be a higher  risk yes both both parts of your statement are right it receives far less attention in the research community it receives less attention in the code development processes and in reality year in year out we lose lives and we lose property because of high wind events it's my personal opinion that this society do in this country continues to move towards a desire for creasing levels of safety which means  that in the end we're going to have some very difficult technical problems to solve on the engineering side because we're going to soon be at the point where i think we can no longer say it's a tornado and we do not design for tornadoes  codes for wind resistance i concur with that just very quickly for the for the entire panel as my time is winding down here the  report securing society against catastrophic earthquake losses recommends three hundred thirty million dollars per year over twenty years to achieve naturally saliency national resiliency for earthquakes  what could be done with a triple fold increase in funding and that's a difficult thing to do but what could be done with a triple fold increase in funding and how might that help both our medication and our that report that you referred to was put together by quite a distinguished group of multi disciplinary people who thought about it for a long time that kind of level of support would accelerate and acceleration is important because the risk increases constantly activities that are already underway and then would provide the kind of of strength basis to to deliver on the products we've heard for example about a number of the areas that deserve research that would be able to be accomplished by that type of level of funding for example the  performance based seismic design is a very tricky problem because you're trying to to deal with the design of a structure to fit a certain level of performance in terms of what the owner would desire from that structure and that performance which is translated into human terms has to then be linked to computer analyses and and methods of assessment and then also the level of seismic risk so there's a lot of effort that goes into that it's a very important part of making communities resilient and that would be able to be accelerated and put into place similarly one of the areas that i think is a tremendous opportunity for the entire country is understanding the interdependence of complex life line systems we know from not only earthquake events but from issues relating to hurricanes and other kinds of natural disasters that there are tremendous interdependencies among the systems and i'll give you an example after her king katrina there was virtually all the infrastructure in place to take oil from the louisiana offshore oil port and take it and on the pipeline system because that was buried it wasn't affected by the hurricane and take it into the midwest where it was absolutely necessary for energy but it was unable to function because the pump stations were without electricity having had those transmission lines blown down and substations underwater because of hurricane katrina so these interdependencies and understanding them and earthquakes has really led the way because of the the large geographic extent of the damage and the the interdependencies and the interaction and all these different functionalities have really helped to the illustrated and there's been a number of  sophisticated models that have been put forward this kind of work could accelerate and and i think not only do you end up with that type of support securing this country against earthquakes but you have an enormous additional benefit in terms of the technology the procedures and the processes that spread out and are applied to all sorts of hazards including human threats in the form of major accidents and then also terrorism so a lot of what's done in the earthquake area affects other hazards and it also affects our critical civil infrastructure and trying to leverage this kind of support in this kind of investment we make in the earthquake area to affect our civil infrastructure make it better you know if you can make civil infrastructure better during an earthquake i guarantee you you've made it better for everything march just a little bit and say that a substantial increase would allow i think a lot more attention to be paid to the substantial problem of evaluating and rehabilitating existing structures and especially in the areas where the earthquake hazard is of the nature where it occurs relatively frequently no place is it truly frequent but relatively frequently we have a tremendous inventory of  built construction that that is not earthquake resilient and the real money is making those structures resilient increasing the funding for the program in a substantial way is the first step towards figuring out how we come up with the right economic models to fund the rehabilitation of existing hazardous construction  there is a strong tradition in the regulation of buildings that laws are not made retroactive there are a few sterling exceptions such as the invention of the smoke detector a little bit less than a half century ago led to building code provisions that existing structures had to be retrofitted with smoke detectors because it was such a low cost item and and saved so many lives we don't have that analogy for almost anything that is structural and sole private sector buildings there are no mandatory there are very very limited pardon me mandatory retroactive provisions in building codes to reduce existing hazard is there an exception for that say in the san francisco bay area that when you really do even a residential structure that you have to upgrade the structure yes and these rules are complicated as you as you might expect what you when you are giving ix essentially extended life to existing buildings there are rules that vary from one jurisdiction to another as to whether you have to actually even evaluate the existing seismic hazard and then if you do have to do that what you have to do in terms of upgrading it is unusual that you would have to bring it existing structure up to the level expected for new construction and the rules are not necessarily consistent fema has been working on this problem for a long time they have they've supported the development of tools that the engineering profession is finding useful but the engineering profession also finds gaps and holes etc in these tools the enhanced funding  accelerate this process so the engineering tools are better and frankly there has to be the public policy side of this to decide how are we actually going to get things implemented thank you with the gentleman from new york like to ask any further questions mr chair and said thank you thank you very much and let me let me move toward closing and i'd like to ask a question of dr lindau and anybody else other factors that of the population affected there are different potentially different responses or different outcomes to various disasters and i just like to invite you to speculate for me and if this is something that to what you have not devoting any professional saw to i'm fine if you decline to to speculate but if if one natural one one manmade disaster if you will if it hurricane katrina had hit a different city with a different ethnic makeup a different social economic max what kinds of outcomes what kinds of reactions might have been different and similarly if instead of the airplanes crashing into the world trade center on nine eleven if say that it happened at texas a and  if if those airplanes had crashed into buildings or a school where there are thirty five hundred kids in houston rather than two office towers in new york  city how might things have been different and if you're comfortable speculating about those scenarios that died and by chance to eliminate the situation for me i'm a professor simply that the hazard exposure of the city made a difference had the land use plans in the city of new orleans prohibited of the structures so that they could withstand the flooding of the city the damage and the death toll would have been smaller so those deal with the hazard exposure and the physical vulnerability in lower income lower education population segments ethnic minorities all of which are indicators of of predictors of social vulnerability these were people that   insufficient funds to be able to travel outside the city for an extended period of time and all their relatives lived in the city so they didn't have any relatives or other people that they could stay with because that's where most people who evacuated do stay they don't go to public shelters it's usually only five to a maximum of about fifteen percent and in most cases most people stay with friends and relatives and if they've got the money they go to commercial facilities hotels lower portion of ethnic minorities or higher that had low incomes on the other hand if there had been compensatory measures that had recognized adequately the social vulnerability the physical vulnerability in the hazard exposure that is if the local emergency plans had provided for the training of bus drivers in arrangements to be sure that the bus drivers would have been there to drive the school buses that many pictures showed were flooded out that were never used for evacuation so had there been better mitigation measures better emergency response preparedness and better disaster recovery preparedness measures had there been a higher proportion of people that not only had flood insurance but had a flood insurance and also homeowners insurance through high quality insurance companies one of the things that was found in andrew is that  many of the ethnic minorities and lower income population segments had their homeowners insurance with regional companies that went bankrupt and they either got nothing or got a very low payment or on their their losses or that what happened was that it took a very long time through the state of florida to get any kind of funds for for reconstruction so are all these social science factors we've talked about the about building codes but it takes political will within a jurisdiction to get those codes adopted implemented and to get the inspections done to make sure that they are actually effectively implemented so there are a large number of social science issues that follow on from just about all of the physical science and engineering issues and that relate to this question of would things have been different if there was good physical science and engineering research it could have been different but only if that research was properly implemented thank you dr lindau for that very  thoughtful response i think that underscores the science committee information is important and the opportunity to think about it is very very precious i want to start something new with this subcommittee hearing we've gone on for a while but i want to turn it back over the panel if the panel has anything else to add it occurs to me that you all have traveled many of you significant distance distances and in the course of  a dialogue like this i think one of the most frustrating things is to have come a long distance and to sit there with a sense of you know i have something to say about that   and one of the things that has become clear in my service committees writing things that end up in building codes is that the fundamental question that i as a structural engineer worry about in terms of how safe is safe enough has really different answers depending upon what kind of environment local political or natural hazard one is talking about from the science committee perspective i think the natural hazard differences are really of interest we are not designing structures to resist earthquakes to be as safe as we are with respect to wind snow or any other natural hazards except flood flood is almost in a different different room if you will maybe in the same building but our hazard level that we consider the design criterion for a flood is something on the order of one hundred or two hundred years mean recurrence interval that means that within a given year you have a one percent or a half a percent chance of your flood protection system failing that the current earthquake criterion is a one out of five thousand chance per year for a wind load failure on a structure that meets the building code is more like one out of twenty five thousand to one out of fifty thousand chance per year this is a public policy question that engineers alone shouldn't necessarily be answering and if there is something that i would like to see a multi headed approach taken on it is what are the appropriate  and one of the things i'd like to remind you is that as a rule universities award degrees in disciplines not in problems when we're dealing with earthquake hazard mitigation or other kinds mitigation it's a problem not a discipline so it's really part of the problem is to figure out ways in which to get universities and the research faculty and universities to collaborate in trying to address these problems a consequence of the fact that we're trained in disciplines is that we view the world very much like a very famous new yorker cover in which  shows the view from manhattan and manhattan island takes up one half of the cover and then new jersey takes about and pennsylvania take about the next quarter and then on the distant horizon are california and japan that's the way that every discipline trains its members to view the world we look at very fine distinctions within our disciplines and think they're very large and so what happens at the con as a consequence is that social scientists are trained to think of physical scientists and engineers are pretty much interchangeable and the physical scientists and engineers you know social the different social sciences psychology economics sociology political science well you know they're all the same and which is horrifying to anybody from within those disciplines the problem is the universe need to get incentives to get people out of their own disciplines simply because all the rewards are to doing things within your own discipline and had a brilliant idea a number of years ago to require in some programs  staff and that had a huge influence on people's willingness to engage in interdisciplinary research it is a journey as a philosophy for once said it's a journey of a thousand  miles we're only at the very first steps there are some engineers that are farther along than others there's some social scientists that are farther along than others but those kinds of incentives are definitely effective in improving the amount of multi chairman will there is a well known person in our community that is the natural hazards and earthquake community by the name of dennis mileti who says that natural hazards never went to college they never had to major in any particular area of engineering or science and i think that sort of speaks to the way communities look at natural hazards if they are affected by earthquakes they are very seriously affected and concerned that they are affected by hurricanes it's similar for that particular hazard  in other words if we could do one more quote and that would be from voltaire we're all victims of our virtue but there is no virtue in being a victim what we want to do is to protect our communities and probably have the best way to do that is to find a multi hazard approach however natural hazards are indian coordinated hazard research involves science modeling and engineering that really does differ among the hazards and so they do have to be approached on a technological basis differently and it also involves a lot of different institutional cultures and stakeholders in a multitude of government agencies and that's why i think a very good way to approach this on a broad level and at a level that would help to integrate is to pursue the national academies and trying to put together a n r c study that would bring together all the stakeholders and look at this problem from a integrated perspective and give us the time to reflect and understand how to go forward and in that process to recognize that nerved is really the gem within the programs that address natural hazards the wonderful things that have come from this program and the the reduction in risk that it has been able to generate for communities affected by seismic and tsunami hazards has been extraordinary but also the fact that it has generated so much technology so much procedure  so much policy which is shared and used by the other natural hazards you know one of the great examples is the world trade center disaster when the world trade center disaster occurred the buildings surrounding the world trade center site had to be inspected but there was no existing protocol for how to examine a building next to a terrorist attack but they used the protocols from inspecting buildings for earthquakes and adapted it and that allowed some very important trading companies to participate in the market much more quickly than they would have and helped really to establish financial order worldwide so supporting the herb is also an important part of this and i hope that we can perhaps  increase some of the authorized levels modestly but certainly try to achieve in our enactment of the authorized levels to use this program as the cornerstone for going forward in multi hazards thank you professor  eleven i believe will be doing a new mattered exercise for the central united states i still think there's much to be learned i do think we we have to narrow our focus sometimes even though there are commonalities i would never deny that but i think we do need to focus it and at least from the emergency management community we can use all the science the tools and the technology you know to help us out and i think about the tools and technologies that have been developed over time for tornadoes or hurricanes or different events you know i think those are helpful and i hope that the reauthorize ation of this program will induce us to keep moving forward because i really do need those tools and that research and even the money for public education and outreach and that will make us stronger as a nation thank you thank you very much one of the reasons that i took the job that i took three years ago was that the earthquake community is probably the most dedicated professional community i have ever witnessed anywhere and as you consider the issue of multi hazard and what might be done in relating to other hazards and looking at the example of need her don't overlook the fact that part of me her success in fact a large part of it has been the involvement of dedicated people from the private sector from academia state and local governments the dollars that we talk about for need her have been leveraged in ways that no one has ever been able to document because of the dedicated server chris that people such as the gentleman at the table today with me have provided for the program and they've done it because not because of new york but because they think it's the right thing for the nation that's something that you can put a price tag on and it's really important to consider that as we look at other hazards to see what kinds of might exist in relation to those other hazards as well thank you very much thank you very much i want to thank the entire panel and thank you for appearing before the committee and the travel that many of you have done the record will remain open for admission of statements from the members and for answers to any follow up questions that the kitty committee may ask of the witnesses again thank you all very very much for this thoughtful discussion that witnesses are excused and the hearing is now a join