ART Version 3 released

Guralp Systems are delighted to announce the release of version 3 of ART, the strong motion Analysis and Research Tool, a Windows program for processing and analyzing strong motion records from Guralp Systems' instruments. ART works closely with Scream! to make analysing seismic data easy. Scream!'s visualization and filtering capabilities allow you to view time series and quickly identify events. Strong-motion records can then be directly imported into ART by selecting the appropriate portion of the record in Scream! and using the right-click context menu, which will automatically start ART with the selected data pre-loaded. Previously recorded data in Guralp Compressed Format (GCF) can also be read in from files and analyzed with any of the rich selection of sophisticated processing techniques.

In common with previous releases, Version 3 will be offered as a free download. This release includes performance and user-interface improvements and incorporates many valuable suggestions from our customers.

New features in Version 3 include:

• Multiple time-histories can be selected for importing into ART;
• Absolute and relative input energy spectra can be computed, plotted and exported;
• Drift spectra for a cantilever shear-beam can be computed, plotted and exported;
• Various strong-motion parameters based on cycle counting can be computed and exported;
• Various additional strong-motion parameters can be computed and exported;
• Graphs can be customized in more ways (compared to ART2.0);
• Records and derived parameters can be exported in Microsoft Excel .xls and Matlab .mat format;
• Basic database functionality was added so that earthquake and station meta-data can be recorded and used;
• Comparisons can be made between observed elastic response spectra and spectra predicted by various ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) and seismic design codes;
• Time-histories can be plotted on to maps to show the geographical distribution of ground motions;
• The software now supports accessing modem-connected instruments;
• Code optimisations have provided better performance; and
• The user interface has been improved, making the software more user-friendly.

This is just a selection of the new features and facilities available in this exciting new version. Please see the release notes accompanying the package for further information.