Earthquake Instrumentation
The RAPID Facility has deployed a variety of instrumentation to support researchers studying earthquakes and cascading hazards such as landslides, rockfalls, liquefaction, and tsunamis. As an example, Alex Grant of the U.S. Geological Survey and other members of a GEER team deployed to Tomakomai, Hokkaido, Japan following a major earthquake to compile an inventory of landslides and lateral spreads using the RAPID Facility’s Leica BLK360 and Maptek XR3 laser scanners.
Researchers Lucas Hogan and Max Stephens at the University of Auckland, New Zealand documented the structural damage sustained in a building following the 2016 Kaikoura Earthquake. The team collected over 800 scans to thoroughly document the building using the BLK360 laser scanner and later the RTC360 laser scanner. This work was completed through an international collaboration between the RAPID Facility and QuakeCoRE.
RAPID staff went to Ponce, Puerto Rico, in support of a project to determine if the impacts of Hurricane Maria resulted in an increased level of damage — or caused unexpected modes of failure — during the 2020 earthquake series. The team — led by Associate Professor Arash Zaghi and Assistant Research Professor Alexandra Hain, both at the University of Connecticut, and Professor Jamie Padgett at Rice University — collected a comprehensive dataset using standard and 360-degree geotagged photography, aerial images from a drone, and structural scans of damaged buildings from the Leica RTC360 scanner.
After the 6.4-magnitude earthquake in Petrinja, Croatia, on Dec. 29, 2020, nanometrics triaxial seismometers and Ingrid Tomac, Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego, deployed with a Leica RTC360 laser scanner to study the numerous sinkholes that formed.
In response to the Fagradaldsfjall earthquake swarm (a series of small earthquakes) and a volcanic eruption in Iceland, Associate Professor Christopher Hamilton of the University of Arizona used RAPID instrumentation to collect high resolution (centimeter-scale) preliminary digital elevation models of potential eruption sites. Maps are also being constructed to determine links between surface fracture patterns and earthquake source mechanisms. Instrumentation included a drone and aerial cameras.
Lastly, several deployments utilized the RAPID equipment following the Palu Indonesia Earthquake and Tsunami. RAPID director Joe Wartman deployed to support the GEER reconnaissance mission to map and characterize massive ground failures (e.g., flowslides) using RAPID instrumentation such as UAVs and a Leica GNSS. A team from USC deployed using the Leica BLK360 scanner to capture tsunami impacts in Palu Bay.
These are but a few highlights of the many earthquake focused deployments the RAPID has assisted with since launching operations.
