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Addressing Misconceptions Around Magnitude and Intensity to Inform Earthquake Early Warning Alerting Strategies

Description: 

Canada is currently in the development phase for a national earthquake early warning system (EEWS) that will operate in regions including British Columbia, and Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. To ensure effectiveness, the public needs to understand the alert message when they receive it and immediately know what to do. Maintaining these goals is not limited to the system and its operations, but also with how the public interprets the alert.

Our group is researching the messaging about earthquakes to the public, trying to understand the history of messaging about earthquake magnitude and intensity, to make that messaging more effective in the future. To do this, we approach the problem from three directions:

· Historical (H)–Conceptual biography of earthquake magnitude and earthquake intensity

· Linguistics (L)–The language and especially metaphors used when talking about earthquakes, earthquake intensity, and magnitude, by the general public as well as by news and social media platforms

· Socio-cultural (SC)–The state of seismicity education in Canada, how that education has developed through time, and how it compares to the contexts of other seismically active regions around the world

This presentation will highlight our research to date:

· (H) Intensity has been at the heart of trying to better understand earthquakes because that has been the most concrete aspect. Local magnitude originally resulted from intensity as it was calculated from the shaking.

· (L) Different factors impact how the public perceives an alert, their experiences with and perceptions of both the phenomenon and the alerts. “Did you feel it?” data from the USGS is helping us understand the way people talk about earthquake magnitude and intensity.

· (SC) Activities to date: Preliminary analysis of Seismic Science Education/Communication; 2. Systematic evaluation of gaps and future information needs to build geoscience knowledge to EEW action capacity 3. Development and implementation of a Pan Canadian Bilingual E3 Survey and 4. Reporting E3 Survey Results.

Session: Earthquake Early Warning Optimization and Efficacy

Type: Oral

Date: 4/20/2023

Presentation Time: 02:45 PM (local time)

Presenting Author: Glenn Dolphin

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: Yes

Authors