← Back to Sessions

Which Earthquake Accounts Matter?

Session: Inspiring a New Generation of Seismology Leaders

Type: Oral

Date: 4/21/2021

Presentation Time: 10:15 AM Pacific

Description: 

As we address the steps that should be taken to improve diversity of geosciences, it is important to note that systemic socioeconomic biases potentially impact not only our community, but also geosciences itself. In this presentation we focus on earthquake observations contributed by human observers, which provide invaluable sources of information to investigate both historical and modern earthquakes. Commonly, the observers whose eyewitness accounts are available to scientists are a self-selected minority of those who experience a given earthquake. As such these may not be representative of the overall population that experienced shaking from the event. Eyewitness accounts can contribute to modern science only if they are recorded and archived in an accessible repository. We explore the extent to which geopolitics and socioeconomic disparities can limit the number of eyewitnesses whose observations can contribute to science. We first revisit a late-19th century earthquake in the central U.S. in 1882 that provides an illustrative example of an event that has been poorly characterized due to a reliance on English-language archival materials. For modern earthquakes, we analyze data collected for recent earthquakes in California and India via the online “Did You Feel It?” system. In California, online data-collection systems appear to be effective in gathering eyewitness accounts from a broad range of socioeconomic groups. In India, however, where literacy and internet access remain more uneven, responses to the “Did You Feel It?” system reveal a strong bias towards responses from urban areas as opposed to rural settlements. The dissimilarity of our results from modern earthquakes in the U.S. and India provides a caution that, in some parts of the world, contributed felt reports can still potentially provide an unrepresentative view of earthquake effects, especially if online data collection systems are not designed to be broadly accessible. This limitation can in turn potentially shape our understanding of an earthquake’s impact and the characterization of seismic hazard.

Presenting Author: Susan E. Hough

Student Presenter: No

Authors