PRISM Software: Processing and Review Interface for Strong‐Motion Data

A continually increasing number of high-quality digital strong-motion records from stations of the National Strong Motion Project (NSMP) of the U.S. Geological Survey, as well as data from regional seismic networks within the United States, calls for automated processing of strong-motion records with human review limited to selected significant or flagged records. The NSMP has developed the Processing and Review Interface for Strong Motion data (PRISM) software to meet this need. In combination with the Advanced National Seismic System Quake Monitoring System (AQMS), PRISM automates the processing of strong-motion records. When used without AQMS, PRISM provides batch-processing capabilities. The PRISM software is platform independent (coded in Java), open source, and does not depend on any closed-source or proprietary software. The software consists of two major components: a record processing engine composed of modules for each processing step, and a review tool, which is a graphical user interface for manual review, edit, and processing. To facilitate use by non-NSMP earthquake engineers and scientists, PRISM (both its processing engine and review tool) is easy to install and run as a stand-alone system on common operating systems such as Linux, OS X, and Windows. PRISM was designed to be flexible and extensible to accommodate implementation of new processing techniques. All the computing features have been thoroughly tested.