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(low frequency humming)

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- [Narrator] Thanks mainly
to oil and gas activities

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earthquakes are much more
common than most Texans realize.

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Fortunately, these thousands
of earthquakes have been minor,

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even so, any quake has the potential

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to damage the bridges and
other roadway infrastructure

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near the quake's epicenter.

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- So starting in the early 2010s,

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we started to see seismicity
increasing in Texas,

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and it was unclear how those
events might affect bridges

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across the state.

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Particularly if we got more earthquakes

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and we got larger earthquakes.

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Now, over the last 10 years,

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we've actually seen the
seismicity increase dramatically

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across many parts of Texas

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because of oil and gas activities.

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- The question is what do
we do after an earthquake?

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We know that there are
gonna be some bridges

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that we need to inspect, but which ones?

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Historically, the way we do this is

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you take the epicenter of the earthquake,

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and depending on the magnitude

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you have a certain arm or radius,

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you draw a big circle
around that epicenter

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and inspect everything in it.

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That's fine in Odessa. In
Dallas that could be a problem.

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- We were able to develop
tools, such as you can see here,

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that indicate given an earthquake,

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given the shaking levels indicated
by the colored bulls-eye,

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and the bridge locations,

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which are shown by each of these circles,

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which bridges are
prioritized for inspection.

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So in this case, the green
points represent bridges

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that might be expected
to be slightly damaged.

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All the black circles are
expected to be no damage.

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- We are working with USGS now

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to customize the way that
it presents this data to us.

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ShakeCast is largely
influenced by Western states

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who have lots of seismic things going on.

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And they're all very tuned
in to things like PGA,

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spectral acceleration, you know,

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they know what these things mean.

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Not so much here. We don't
work with this all the time.

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So we need to think about, with USGS,

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how do we present this information

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in a way that a bridge inspector can use?

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- It's a lot of money saved

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with respect to the time
to do the inspections,

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the inspectors themselves,
but most importantly,

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the time and the money influence

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for the whole society of
people who, in other cases,

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wouldn't be able to get to work
because a bridge is closed.

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So it's really a big
savings, not just for TxDOT,

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but for all of the citizens of Texas.

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- [Narrator] For more information

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and to find the publications
for this project

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please visit the TxDOT Research Library

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at the link shown below.