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Kishor Jaiswal

Kishor is a research civil (structural) engineer at U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. At USGS, he leads the development of Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) system’s earthquake casualty and economic loss estimation models.

As a Chief of Engineering & Risk Project at Geologic Hazards Science Center, Dr. Jaiswal leads the development of earthquake risk related products for buildings and critical infrastructure. Dr. Jaiswal is the Principal Investigator of 2017 FEMA P-366 study that produced annualized earthquake loss estimates for the United States. Dr. Jaiswal has also contributed to the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) development efforts by participating in and contributing to number of GEM’s earthquake risk-related projects. Dr. Jaiswal serves on Editorial Board of Earthquake Spectra Journal and is a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) in the state of Colorado. He is a recipient of numerous awards and recognition throughout his career, including 2014 EERI Housner Fellowship, inaugural recipient of 2012 Global Earthquake Model (GEM)’s Outstanding Contribution Award, and the Earthquake Spectra Outstanding Journal Paper Award. Dr. Jaiswal has authored and co-authored more than 150 professional peer reviewed publications that include journal papers, USGS publication series, conference papers, and published abstracts over the last 15 years of his professional career.

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Operational Earthquake Forecasting – Implementing a Real-Time System for California

It is well know that every earthquake can spawn others (e.g., as aftershocks), and that such triggered events can be large and damaging, as recently demonstrated by L’Aquila, Italy and Christchurch, New Zealand earthquakes. In spite of being an explicit USGS strategic-action priority (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2012/1088; page 32), the USGS currently lacks an automated system with which to forecast s...
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John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis
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Operational Earthquake Forecasting – Implementing a Real-Time System for California

It is well know that every earthquake can spawn others (e.g., as aftershocks), and that such triggered events can be large and damaging, as recently demonstrated by L’Aquila, Italy and Christchurch, New Zealand earthquakes. In spite of being an explicit USGS strategic-action priority (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2012/1088; page 32), the USGS currently lacks an automated system with which to forecast s...
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A theoretical framework for integrating ground failure models into regional seismic performance assessments of buried pipelines

A variety of models exist for characterizing earthquake-induced ground failures, but application of these models towards regional seismic performance assessments of buried pipelines remains challenging. One challenge is that ground failures often occur at localized geospatial scales while buried pipelines are spatially distributed over long distances. In this study, we propose a theoretical framew
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Geologic Hazards Science Center

Partitioning ground motion uncertainty when conditioned on station data

Rapid estimation of earthquake ground shaking and proper accounting of associated uncertainties in such estimates when conditioned on strong‐motion station data or macroseismic intensity observations are crucial for downstream applications such as ground failure and loss estimation. The U.S. Geological Survey ShakeMap system is called upon to fulfill this objective in light of increased near‐real‐
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Geologic Hazards Science Center

Open-source resources help navigate new IM regulations

The revision of federal safety regulations for integrity management of gas transmission pipelines to require explicit consideration of seismicity increases the importance for operators to be actively identifying high-consequence areas (HCAs), evaluating seismic-related threats, and choosing a risk model to support risk management decisions. To ensure equal access to information by both operators a
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Geologic Hazards Science Center

2021 U.S. National Seismic Hazard Model for the State of Hawaii

The 2021 U.S. National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) for the State of Hawaii updates the two-decades-old former model by incorporating new data and modeling techniques to improve the underlying ground shaking forecasts of tectonic-fault, tectonic-flexure, volcanic, and caldera collapse earthquakes. Two earthquake ground shaking hazard models (public policy and research) are produced that differ in h
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Volcano Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center, Geologic Hazards Science Center, Volcano Science Center

Earthquake risk of gas pipelines in the conterminous United States and its sources of uncertainty

Relatively little research has been conducted to systematically quantify the nationwide earthquake risk of gas pipelines in the US; simultaneously, national guidance is limited for operators across the country to consistently evaluate the earthquake risk of their assets. Furthermore, many challenges and uncertainties exist in a comprehensive seismic risk assessment of gas pipelines. As a first sta
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Geologic Hazards Science Center

An efficient Bayesian framework for updating PAGER loss estimates

We introduce a Bayesian framework for incorporating time-varying noisy reported data on damage and loss information to update near real-time loss estimates/alerts for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) system. Initial loss estimation by PAGER immediately following an earthquake includes several uncertainties. Historically, the PAGER’s alerting
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Geologic Hazards Science Center

The 2018 update of the US National Seismic Hazard Model: Where, why, and how much probabilistic ground motion maps changed

The 2018 US Geological Survey National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) incorporates new data and updated science to improve the underlying earthquake and ground motion forecasts for the conterminous United States. The NSHM considers many new data and component input models: (1) new earthquakes between 2013 and 2017 and updated earthquake magnitudes for some earlier earthquakes; (2) two updated smoothe
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Earthquake Science Center, Geologic Hazards Science Center

Selecting three components of ground motions from Conditional Spectra for multiple stripe analyses

For complex structures where the seismic response depends appreciably on the vertical (V) component of ground motion (GM) (e.g., base-isolated buildings, long-span bridges, dams, nuclear power plants), incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) is commonly utilized to estimate seismic risk, where the V components of GM are selected and scaled based on the corresponding horizontal (H) components. The resul
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Geologic Hazards Science Center

Assessing the long-term earthquake risk for the US National Bridge Inventory (NBI)

We estimate annualized earthquake loss associated with over 600,000 bridges located throughout the contiguous United States. Each year, the Federal Highway Administration, in partnership with State Departments of Transportation, undertake a massive exercise to update the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) by combining data from states, federal agencies, local jurisdictions, and tribal governments. Th
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Geologic Hazards Science Center

Development of a global seismic risk model

Since 2015 the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Foundation and its partners have been supporting regional programmes and bilateral collaborations to develop an open global earthquake risk model. These efforts led to the development of a repository of probabilistic seismic hazard models, a global exposure dataset comprising structural and occupancy information regarding the residential, commercial and
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Geologic Hazards Science Center

A domestic earthquake impact alert protocol based on the combined USGS PAGER and FEMA Hazus loss estimation systems

The U.S. Geological Survey’s PAGER alert system provides rapid (10-20 min) but general loss estimates of ranges of fatalities and economic impact for significant global earthquakes. FEMA’s Hazus software, in contrast, provides time consuming (2-5 hours) but more detailed loss information quantified in terms of structural, social, and economic consequences estimated at a much higher spatial resolut
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Earthquake Hazards Program, Geologic Hazards Science Center

The 2018 update of the US National Seismic Hazard Model: Overview of model and implications

During 2017–2018, the National Seismic Hazard Model for the conterminous United States was updated as follows: (1) an updated seismicity catalog was incorporated, which includes new earthquakes that occurred from 2013 to 2017; (2) in the central and eastern United States (CEUS), new ground motion models were updated that incorporate updated median estimates, modified assessments of the associated
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Natural Hazards Mission Area, Geologic Hazards Science Center
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USGS Authors New Report on Seismic Hazard, Risk, and Design for South America

New seismic hazard and risk assessments can help at-risk communities prepare for future earthquake disasters

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Nearly Half of Americans Exposed to Potentially Damaging Earthquakes

More than 143 million Americans living in the 48 contiguous states are exposed to potentially damaging ground shaking from earthquakes. When the...

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