Wald was a developer of
PAGER, a post-earthquake analytic system. He is also the primary developer and distributor of
ShakeMap. Other products of note developed or managed by Wald include:
Did You Feel It? . For
Did You Feel It? (DYFI), Wald leveraged the work of Lori Dengler and Jim Dewey following the
Northridge earthquake. Their large volume of macroseismic phone surveys motivated them to create a "community decimal intensity" by assigning numerical values to individual questionnaire responses that they could calibrate against the
Modified Mercalli Intensity scale, the macroseismic intensity scale in use in the U.S. The numerical assignment of intensities from questionnaires lent itself naturally to automating the entire process of data collection, intensity assignment, and publishing via the internet, which today creates community-sourced maps of perceived intensity after an earthquake. DYFI has been operating for over two decades (1999–present) in the U.S. and over 18 years globally. The survey has collected over 6 million individual DYFI intensity reports during that period. DYFI allows for high rates and quantities of macroseismic data collection. High-quality MMI maps can be made almost immediately with complete coverage at a higher resolution than in the past.
ShakeCast In and around 2000, via contacts with the
Caltech ERA, Wald began interacting with many utility and lifeline operators. A common query was, "Given a ShakeMap, how can I tell what the level of shaking was at each of my facilities?” Working initially with Phil Naecker, an IT and infrastructure consultant, and with support from Loren Turner of the California Department of Transportation (
Caltrans), David's team prototyped ShakeCast—short for ShakeMap Broadcast. ShakeCast was developed as a post-earthquake situational awareness application that automatically retrieves earthquake shaking data from ShakeMap to compare ground shaking intensity measures against a user's facilities. ShakeCast is now a fully automated software system for delivering specific ShakeMap products to critical users and triggering established post-earthquake response protocols. ShakeCast generates potential damage assessments and inspection priority notifications, maps, and web-based products for critical users, emergency managers, and anyone specified on a need-to-know basis. == Honors ==