[California] Introductions

[Landon Blake]

Bob,

 

Thank you for the introduction. It sounds like you are doing some very
specialized and interesting work with GIS. Does Intergraph's Geomedia
products support a programming language for customization and
automation? Is there a particular programming language that you are
comfortable with?

 

Are there any specific goals you would like to see a California Chapter
of the OSGeo accomplish in the next year? Are you interested in
attending the CALGIS 2008 Conference?

 

Landon

 

 

________________________________

From: california-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:california-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Moskovitz, Bob
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2007 12:18 PM
To: california at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [California] Introductions

 

Hello All,

 

I'm a Research Analyst I (GIS) in the California Geological Surveys(CGS)
Seismic Hazards Zonation Project.  There are not many Open Source
advocates here, but I am hoping to change that.  I am mainly involved in
writing various programs that implements our Liquefaction(see 1) and
Earthquake Induced Landslide(see 2) Zones.  These programs range from
simple data translators written in Perl to a program that calculates
liquefaction potential using borehole, ground water, and peak ground
acceleration using the Intergraph Modular GIS Environment (MGE)
programming language called MDL (a derivative of the C Programming
Language).

 

Since MGE is obsolete, we have been migrating to Intergraph's Geomedia
Professional and Geomedia Grid.  These programs have their strength
(spatial queries, functional attributes, etc) and weaknesses (problem
importing/exporting shapefiles as well as Geotiffs, coordinate system
and projection are often messed up, inadequate grid classifier, etc.)  I
know that FOSS GIS can do what we need to do and I'm hoping that a
California Chapter of OSGEO could be a great help.

 

Bob

 

 

(1) Liquefaction occurs when loose, water-saturated sediments lose
strength and fail during strong ground
shaking. Liquefaction is defined as the transformation of granular
material from a solid state into a
liquefied state as a consequence of increased pore-water pressure. The
process of zonation for liquefaction
combines Quaternary geologic mapping, historical ground-water
information and subsurface geotechnical
data. The liquefaction hazard Zone of Required Investigation boundaries
are based on the presence of
shallow (< 40 feet depth) historic groundwater in uncompacted sands and
silts deposited during the last
15,000 years and sufficiently strong levels of earthquake shaking
expected during the next 50 years.

 

(2)Landslides tend to occur in weak soil and rock on sloping terrain.
The Zone of Required Investigation for
earthquake-induced landslides generally indicate areas characterized by
steep slopes composed of weak
materials that may fail when shaken by an earthquake. The process for
zonation of earthquake-induced
landslides incorporates expected levels of future earthquake shaking,
evidence of existing landslides, slope
gradient and strength of hillslope materials.

 

Bob Moskovitz 
Seismic Hazard Zonation Project
California Geological Survey 
http://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/shzp

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