Washington, U.S.A. – The space-based technology that lets GPS-equipped motorists constantly update their precise location will undergo a major test of its ability to rapidly pinpoint the location and magnitude of strong earthquakes across the western United States. Results from the new Real-time Earthquake Analysis for Disaster (READI) Mitigation Network soon could be used to assist prompt disaster response and more accurate tsunami warnings.

The new research network builds on decades of technology development supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, NASA, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The network uses real-time GPS measurements from nearly 500 stations throughout California, Oregon and Washington. When a large earthquake is detected, GPS data are used to automatically calculate its vital characteristics including location, magnitude and details about the fault rupture.

“With the READI network we are enabling continued development of real-time GPS technologies to advance national and international early warning disaster systems,” said Craig Dobson, natural hazards program manager in the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This prototype system is a significant step towards realizing the goal of providing Pacific basin-wide natural hazards capability around the Pacific ’Ring of Fire.’”

Accurate and rapid identification of earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 and stronger is critical for disaster response and mitigation efforts, especially for tsunamis. Calculating the strength of a tsunami requires detailed knowledge of the size of the earthquake and associated ground movements. Acquiring this type of data for very large earthquakes is a challenge for traditional seismological instruments that measure ground shaking.

High-precision, second-by-second measurements of ground displacements using GPS have been shown to reduce the time needed to characterize large earthquakes and to increase the accuracy of subsequent tsunami predictions. After the capabilities of the network have been fully demonstrated, it is intended to be used by appropriate natural hazard monitoring agencies. USGS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are responsible for detecting and issuing warnings on earthquakes and tsunamis, respectively.

“By using GPS to measure ground deformation from large earthquakes, we can reduce the time needed to locate and characterize the damage from large seismic events to several minutes,” said Yehuda Bock, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Orbit and Permanent Array Center in La Jolla, Calif. ”We now are poised to fully test the prototype system this year.”

The READI network is a collaboration of many institutions including Scripps at the University of California in San Diego; Central Washington University in Ellensburg; the University of Nevada in Reno; California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena; UNAVCO in Boulder, Colo.; and theUniversity of California at Berkeley.

NASA, NSF, USGS, and other federal, state, and local partners support the GPS stations in the network, including the EarthScope Plate Boundary Observatory, the Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array, the Bay Area Regional Deformation Array and the California Real-Time Network.

“The relatively small investments in GPS-based natural hazards systems have revolutionized the way we view the Earth and allowed us to develop this prototype system with great potential benefits for the infrastructure and population in earthquake-prone states in the western United States,” said Frank Webb, Earth Science Advanced Mission Concepts program manager at JPL.

The READI network is the outgrowth of nearly 25 years of U.S. government research efforts to develop the capabilities and applications of GPS technology. The GPS satellite system was created by the Department of Defense for military and ultimately civil positioning needs.

NASA leveraged this investment by supporting development of a global GPS signal receiving network to improve the accuracy and utility of GPS positioning information. Today that capability provides real-time, pinpoint positioning and timing for a wide variety of uses from agriculture to Earth exploration.

“Conventional seismic networks have consistently struggled to rapidly identify the true size of great earthquakes during the last decade,” said Timothy Melbourne, director of the Central Washington University’s Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array. “This GPS system is more likely to provide accurate and rapid estimates of the location and amount of fault slip to fire, utility, medical and other first-response teams.”

The GPS earthquake detection capability was first demonstrated by NASA-supported research on a major 2004 Sumatra quake conducted by Geoffrey Blewitt and colleagues at the University of Nevada in Reno.

For more information about NASA programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov

Image Courtesy of   ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock.com

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The Employee Ownership Foundation has focused on convincing evidence from the most prestigious social survey in the U.S., the General Social Survey (GSS), that showed employees in the U.S who had employee stock ownership were four times less likely to be laid off during the Great Recession than employees without employee stock ownership.

Specifically, the 2010 GSS, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, found that 3% of employees with employee stock ownership, which include the ESOP model and other forms of employee ownership, were laid off in 2009-2010 compared to a 12% rate for employees without employee stock ownership.

In addition, the 2010 GSS data indicated that 13% of the employees with employee stock ownership intended to leave their companies in the coming months whereas the rate was 24% for employees without employee stock ownership. This indicates significantly lower expected turnover for workers with employee stock ownership.

“These numbers confirm what observers of employee stock ownership have been saying for years,” said J. Michael Keeling, president of the Employee Ownership Foundation. “Employees with employee stock ownership, including those with ESOPs, in general, have more sustainable employment. Too bad we had to suffer a Great Recession to have the objective data to shed more light on these claims,” he added.

Additionally, the survey found that employee ownership rates remained stable since 2006 with 17.4% of individuals reporting they owned company stock. About 19 million U.S. citizens own stock in the companies in which they work.

The Employee Ownership Foundation provided significant funding for the supplemental series of questions on shared capitalism in the survey. Shared capitalism is defined as broad-based employee, current or deferred, stock compensation programs, such as ESOPs (employee stock ownership plans), stock purchases, stock options, gain sharing, profit sharing, and bonus programs.

The shared capitalism series of questions were developed and analyzed by well-known employee ownership researchers, Professor Joseph Blasi and Professor Douglas Kruse (School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University) who submitted an application for their inclusion in the GSS.

The researchers are continuing to analyze these and other related data from the Survey to shed light on the role of employee stock ownership in the U.S. economy. ”We need policies that are job sustainers, not just policies that are job creators,” Keeling said.

“Hopefully our national leaders, including the current group of those running for President, of both parties, will take note of this evidence, and understand that national policies to encourage employee stock ownership, and new policies to increase ownership among more working Americans, need to be considered as an effective way to ensure our national employment rate is where we all want it to be.”

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