Center for Engineering Strong-Motion Data (CESMD)

Data Attribution and Use Policy

Approved by the CESMD Center Management Group on December 1, 2015 and effective December 1, 2015.

Both the Engineering Data Center (EDC) and the Virtual Data Center (VDC) are operated by the CESMD to provide public access, either directly via the EDC web site or by virtual links through the VDC web site, to digital records and accompanying metadata of strong-motion data sets that have been compiled, archived, and made available to the CESMD by numerous governmental, educational, and private-sector organizations in the US and internationally. The following sections of this document provide information for users about the CESMD regarding attribution of data used in publications, and about limitations on the suitability for use of the data.

CESMD Public Data Access: The two data portals of the CESMD, the EDC and VDC, only serve data and metadata that are deemed publicly available by the data owners.

Citation: Users who utilized the data center’s services to access strong-motion products are recommended to cite CESMD as:

California Geological Survey and U.S. Geological Survey (2005). Center for Engineering Strong Motion Data (CESMD). U.S. Geological Survey https://doi.org/10.5066/P13HTZQS.

Data Attribution: Proper attribution of owners of the data accessed via the CESMD EDC and VDC data portals is regarded by the CESMD to be critically important. To this end, the CESMD requests that all networks and organizations from which data are being served through the EDC and VDC provide a statement of the appropriate attribution or acknowledgement for the data collection system and the organization that operates it. When users download any data through the CESMD, the pertinent information for acknowledging each data source in the set will be included automatically with the requested data files. Users of data accessed via the CESMD are strongly encouraged to use these attribution statements as an appropriate acknowledgment or as a reference in papers, reports, or any other publications and presentations that include data obtained from the CESMD. The following is a sample attribution for obtaining data from CGS and USGS networks:

“The authors acknowledge accessing strong-motion data through the Center for Engineering Strong Motion Data (CESMD), last visited on 14 Aug 2015. The networks or agencies providing the data used in this report are the California Strong Motion Instrumentation Program (CSMIP) and the USGS National Strong Motion Project (NSMP).”

Disclaimer: The CESMD serves as a portal for engineering strong-motion data. While the CESMD strives to provide the most current version of data from all contributing networks, any data are potentially subject to future revisions by these data providers. The CESMD makes no guarantee of the quality, reliability, usability, completeness, or suitability of any data downloaded through CESMD for any particular purpose.