Case Study: New San Francisco General Hospital achieves enhanced seismic monitoring and operational resilience with Trimble REF TEK seismic instrumentation

California hospitals seismic safety laws instrumentation of the new san francisco general hospital

Trimble’s REF TEK division provided strong-motion seismic instrumentation for the rebuild of San Francisco General Hospital to meet California’s stringent seismic safety laws for acute care facilities. Faced with high seismic risk and state requirements that hospitals remain operational after major earthquakes, the project needed reliable, building-wide monitoring to support emergency response and long-term structural performance evaluation.

Trimble supplied multichannel accelerographs, uniaxial accelerometers and strong-motion sensors installed on every floor, at ground reference stations and as displacement sensors, with data streamed to the California Strong Motion Instrumentation Program (CSMIP). The instrumentation complements the hospital’s state-of-the-art base-isolated design (115 isolators) and delivers real-time and post-event acceleration, velocity and displacement data to seismologists, engineers and emergency officials—helping validate performance, inform response and improve future code-driven design.