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Characterizing Earthquake Early Warning’s Efficacy

Description: 

Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) will undoubtedly lead to success stories, yet some letdowns will occur due to alert limitations or inaccuracies. Though strategies vary, magnitude and location are typically the ingredients needed for determining alert regions, so evaluating their accuracy, timeliness, and capacity to predict shaking is essential. Empirical analyses can bear out EEW’s technical success, and seismologists are working diligently to test EEW alerting. However, EEW is also a human endeavor­— converting seismological information into alerts meant to elicit human and technological reactions. So how do we formulate a testable hypothesis on the success of EEW from the societal perspective, and how can we collect the requisite observations? Technical evaluations should be transparent and informative, mapping populations who experience each level of shaking and tallying those who were successfully warned (or not). In addition to technical evaluations, we need approaches for objective data gathering to evaluate EEW’s societal benefits. For one, the USGS has implemented a post-event EEW questionnaire as a follow-up to “Did You Feel It?”. Respondents will contribute quantitative survey data about alert timeliness and functionality and actions taken—all as a function of reported intensity. In addition to general user-volunteered evaluations, we could benefit from sociotechnical evaluations after each event by surveying technical users, such as utilities and other registered alert recipients. Additionally, forensics aimed at understanding damage, injuries, or incidents avoided—or those aggravated by EEW—need to be documented and evaluated to understand the interplay of EEW technology and society fully. Finally, we aim to form an international collaborative community to follow up on each earthquake for which an EEW alert was (or should have been) issued so that we can learn as much as possible about the technological and human endeavor that is EEW.

Session: Earthquake Early Warning Optimization and Efficacy

Type: Oral

Date: 4/20/2023

Presentation Time: 02:30 PM (local time)

Presenting Author: David J. Wald

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors