ShakeMap operations, policies, and procedures

The US Geological Survey’s ShakeMap is used domestically and globally for post-earthquake emergency management and response, engineering analyses, financial instruments, and other decision-making activities. Recent developments in the insurance, reinsurance, and catastrophe bond sectors link payouts of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to ShakeMap products. Similarly, building codes, post-earthquake building damage forensic evaluations, and geotechnical evaluations often rely on estimated peak response-spectral values for site-specific evaluations that may lead to costly analyses, retrofits, or other expenditures. Given such activities, financial, engineering, and other technical users demand processing specifications and a metadata trail for actuarial, escrow, and forensic purposes for each significant earthquake. Recent inquiries include how and why maps change with time, how to interpret metadata, and how to obtain the creation and update history of various map layers. Similarly, the collection of ShakeMap scenarios and historical ShakeMaps—either created in earlier versions or rerun as part of the latest version of the ShakeMap Atlas—warrant a full explanation of the inputs, processing, and archiving given their contribution to fragility curve development and loss model calibration. For these reasons, in addition to event-specific ShakeMap metadata and a comprehensive online ShakeMap Manual, we have crafted this practice paper to answer several of the most frequently asked technical questions. We also describe an application programming interface (API) for accessing site-specific shaking metrics and their uncertainties for earthquake forensic purposes in a consistent fashion. In all, we describe the advantages of employing ShakeMaps for these critical purposes as well as describe their limitations and uncertainties, offering an extensive set of instructions and disclaimers that can be referenced by ShakeMap users.

To confront sexual violence, we must train non-forensic experts to perform medico-legal evaluations

Sexual violence is a global crisis. Forensic evaluations are critical for obtaining evidence and increasing the likelihood of accessing justice, as many cases fail due to lack of evidence or poor evidence. In some countries, only board-certified forensic specialists are authorized to conduct forensic evaluations. However, the high number of sexual violence cases coupled with the shortage of forensic physicians make that restriction a fundamental impediment to a rights-based response to sexual violence crimes. Governments and regulatory bodies should expand the pool of those capable of conducting forensic sexual violence evaluations by partnering with clinicians of different specialties and facilitating their training.

The Designated Forensic Professional Program in Massachusetts

The Designated Forensic Professional Program in Massachusetts, a collaboration between the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, was started in 1985 for the purpose of providing specialty training and certification to mental health professionals providing public-sector evaluations of competence to stand trial and criminal responsibility to the Massachusetts courts. The program initially certified only psychologists but was eventually expanded to include forensic psychiatrists as well. The approach involves intensive mentoring and supervision and serves as a national model for states wishing to train public sector mental health professionals in the delivery of specialized forensic evaluations.

University of California Davis Forensic Psychiatry and California Department of State Hospitals Collaboration

The collaboration described in this chapter involves the Department of Psychiatry in the medical school at the University of California, Davis, and the California Department of State Hospitals. For more than 20 years, this partnership has involved placing forensic psychiatry fellows in state hospitals operated by the state of California. In addition to the high-quality forensic psychiatric services delivered by these fellows, the partnership has also included consultation and on-site forensic evaluations conducted by supervising faculty, continuing education and training provided to hospital staff, and applied research conducted on questions directly relevant to practice. It serves as a national model for a well-operated, long-standing partnership between academic psychiatry and a publicly operated hospital system.

Accelerated Pavement Testing to Evaluate the Reinforcement Effect of Geogrids in Flexible Pavements

This study presents an accelerated pavement testing (APT) to evaluate the reinforcement effect of geogrids in flexible pavements. A full-scale conventional three-layer flexible pavement structure was constructed, and was divided into one unreinforced section and two reinforced sections with base reinforced by geogrids placed at different depth of base course. The testing program was divided into three parts: performance testing, response testing, and forensic evaluations. The performance testing recorded the development of surface permanent deformation with the number of loadings. The falling weight deflectometer (FWD) was employed to investigate deflections and moduli of flexible pavements in the response testing. The excavation of pavements was to further analyze reinforcement mechanisms. Test results demonstrated the benefits of incorporating geogrids in base course in reducing the permanent deformation and improving the modulus of base course. Compared with the unreinforced section, accumulated permanent deformations in the two reinforced sections decreased significantly, with a drop of 13%–37%, and the back-calculated moduli of the reinforced base increased by 58%–78% after APT. It was possible that sufficient permanent deformation was needed for mobilizing geogrids to constrain lateral movements of granular particles, to increase the overall structural behavior of the reinforced base course, and to improve the stress distribution on the subgrade. These interaction mechanisms were also confirmed in the pavement trench. For a pavement system consisting of a thin surface and base layer, the proper placement position of geogrids was at the base–subgrade interface for this test and loading arrangement.