COSMOS

Established in 1997, the Consortium of Organizations for Strong Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS) promotes collaboration among programs and institutions to improve strong-motion measurements, to solve mutual problems with instrumentation and data, and to assist in strong-motion data dissemination. Since its founding, COSMOS has become internationally known for its Virtual Data Center (VDC), which provides access to ground motions recorded anywhere in the world. Since 2005, COSMOS has also hosted a highly-regarded annual Technical Session to provide a link between the ground-motion, seismic code development, and geotechnical and structural engineering communities. Recently, COSMOS has initiated work to fill an important gap related to guidelines and standards for collecting, archiving, and providing public access to strong-motion recording and associated metadata of engineering significance.