San Francisco Sidewalk Survey Information for Volunteers
February 24, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
IT’S A GO FOR TOMORROW’S SIDEWALK SURVEY!
- Directions and parking info to SGH office (PDF)
- FAQs for volunteers (PDF)
- Procedures for photos (PDF)
Please NOTE: For various reasons, we are not going to test the ROVER system on this day. We hope to be able to use the system in the future, to help us gather more specific information on a smaller number of buildings.
If you have a digital camera, please bring the camera and the cable to connect to a computer at the end of the day to download the photos.
Concrete Coalition Sidewalk Survey in San Francisco — February 27th! Please RSVP
February 18, 2010 by admin · Comments Off
The Concrete Coalition is looking for volunteers to help verify the basic count of pre-1980 concrete buildings in the City of San Francisco. Last fall a group of volunteers, led by Steve Kadysiewski, came up with the estimate of 3000. We now want to send out a larger group of volunteers (pairs of 2 or 3) to check some of the more densely built areas of the city, primarily downtown. This sidewalk survey is scheduled for SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27th, 9 am – 2 pm, including an orientation session from 9 to 10 am.
We are going to work from color Sanborn maps, which will be given to each team. These maps show concrete buildings, and the teams will go out and verify if each building in fact still exists, and if it appears to be concrete. In addition, we will ask each team to answer several questions for each building – all things that can be determined from the street: number of stories, type of occupancy or use, vertical or horizontal irregularities – and to take a picture. Each team will look at on average 10 to 15 buildings.
We have an eager group of 30 to 40 masters students from Berkeley, Stanford and San Jose State who will help, and we need another 40 to 50 practitioners to make the day successful. We will all assemble at Simpson Gumpertz and Heger’s offices at One Market St, 6th Floor, San Francisco, near the Embarcadero BART and Muni station at 9 am. Because it is a Saturday, your name will need to be given to the guard first. Lunch will be provided.
ATC and FEMA have agreed to let us use the newly developed ROVER system for this field day. At least 10 teams will be able to use this system. ROVER is the computerized version of FEMA 154, Rapid Visual Screening of Buildings for Potential Seismic Risk. ROVER adapts FEMA 154 to operate on a Windows Mobile smartphone instead of a paper form. The advantage to using ROVER is that the information is automatically uploaded to a server, instantly creating a database for these buildings. ROVER also handles digital photos (watermarked with building name, lat/lon, date and time, etc.), digital sketches, and looks up site soil class. FEMA is loaning us 10 ROVER kits. In addition, we’re looking for volunteers who have Windows Mobile smartphones and GPS devices that could be carried around during this field day. It would be ideal if we could find enough smartphones and GPS devices so that each team can use one. The smartphone must have a touchscreen, camera, and Windows Mobile 5 or higher. ROVER is free software, so you will be able to download it and keep it on your own smartphones. Paper forms will be available for those preferring them.
If you have any questions, please contact Marjorie Greene at EERI (email below). We really appreciate your willingness to help us advance our knowledge of these buildings. February 27th happens to also be the Chinese New Year’s Parade in San Francisco (which starts at 5 pm), so we can guarantee a certain amount of color and excitement in downtown.
When: Saturday, February 27th, 9am to 2pm
Where: Start at offices of SGH at One Market Street, 6th floor, San Francisco (Embarcadero BART)
This event is FREE and lunch is included!
RSVP to Marjorie Greene (MGreene@eeri.org) before this Friday, February 19th. Please indicate if you have a Windows Mobile smartphone.