Stable O&M Funding

In past years, support for NHFN O&M has been obtained on a yearly basis through competetive proposals to the USGS's external National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP) program. Our requests for operating and maintaining a network were at a disadvantage in many regards since they had to compete against other proposals in the program that were focused on research. To help offset this disadvantage, we would also typically propose not only support for O&M but also support for research to be performed using NHFN data. For years the results of our proposal requests were funding grants that were roughly half the requested support and that were barely able to support the O&M of the network, without any moneys left over to do research. The need to compete competitively each year also contributed a significant level of uncertainly to the prospects for continued operation of the NHFN over longer time periods, and long-term planning of enhancement and expansion of the network were difficult.

This year, finally, after several years of negotiation and administrative and operational adaptations, we were able to propose and obtain a 3-year funding grant (cooperative agreement) through the ANSS (Advanced National Seismic System). Though this grant supports O&M for only 9 NHFN stations, it is more stable in the long-term, allowing for long-term planning and action to take place. It has also allowed us to fold the 5 MPBO stations into the network, which provide an excellent complement to the NHFN's borehole seismic coverage of the Bay Area. This year, we have also obtained a 3-year funding agreement with Caltrans for the O&M of 10 additional NHFN stations, bringing the total number of stations with long-term O&M support to 19 (14 currently operational and 5 near operational). We anticipate future long-term O&M support for the new planned NHFN stations to also receive long-term Caltrans support.