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Outreach and Engagement to Ensure the Success of Canada’s Earthquake Early Warning System

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) operates a national Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system, focussed on regions with moderate to high seismic hazard: western British Columbia, eastern Ontario, and southern Quebec. EEW mitigates earthquake impacts by allowing for timely response actions by the public, emergency measures organizations, Critical Infrastructure (CI) operators, and other industrial facilities. For the system to be effective, however, a culture of awareness is valuable in ensuring appropriate protective actions are taken when alerts are received. A coordinated public education campaign is helping to achieve this, with a pre-launch survey conducted to establish the baseline knowledge of people within EEW regions. Social science research by collaborators has also guided the education of vulnerable populations. The efficacy of such efforts was examined in the wake of two EEWs disseminated in British Columbia within a year of the EEW system’s initiation in the region.
NRCan has hosted workshops and other outreach activities with CI operators to ensure they have the opportunity to incorporate technologies that automatically translate EEW alerts into protective actions, such as halting trains, opening doors, closing valves, and issuing warnings. Over the past year, NRCan has been integrating Technical Partners (TPs) from the Transportation, Emergency Management, and Energy sectors. Simultaneously, NRCan is encouraging EEW technology providers in Canada to develop such automated systems. To ensure broad reach of these efforts, NRCan is collaborating with federal and provincial public safety organizations, private and international partners, and Non-Governmental Organizations, to ensure authoritative, consistent, accessible EEW messaging for the public, TPs and other technical users. By making it possible to take protective actions before the arrival of potentially harmful shaking, the national EEW system will contribute to the reduction of earthquake risk in Canada, as recommended within the United Nations Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Session: Advancing Earthquake Early Warning: Science, Technology and Engagement in the U.S. and Beyond [Poster]

Type: Poster

Room: Exhibit Hall A+B

Date: 4/16/2026

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Stephen Crane

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Poster Number: 20

Additional Authors