This summer our research group had the pleasure of hosting Alex Quiachon, an incoming civil engineering freshman student from the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Program hosted by USC Viterbi School of Engineering.
Alex was tasked with performing field studies to determine the spatial distribution of site period at two earthquake strong motion recording stations (Tarzana Clubhouse, CE 24103; and LA Brentwood VAMC Bldg, NP 638). He was able to accomplish this through the use of seismometers which we deployed at (or near) the respective sites. The data collected (ambient noise/vibrations) was processed by Alex using Obspy package and HVSRpy package on a Jupyter Python Notebook. After processing the data and extracting the estimated site periods, he then performed regression Kriging to extend the estimates of site period over an area surrounding each station.
He presented his results and efforts at the Viterbi SURE Symposium to his peers and other researchers and faculty. His poster is below.
All this effort required learning a lot of new and complex concepts, skills, and tools, which Alex did very well. Quite impressive for an incoming freshman. He will be attending Colorado School of Mines this fall 2022.