← Back to Sessions

Making the Crowdsourced “Did You Feel It?” System More Accessible: A Global Analysis

Description: 

The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) 'Did You Feel It?' (DYFI) system is an internet tool that collects shaking intensity observations through crowdsourcing. It produces maps and provides supplementary data to ShakeMap, which offers near-real-time maps of ground motion resulting from significant earthquakes around the globe. However, barriers such as technology and language make DYFI an unequally accessible tool, which can lead to a limited scientific understanding of an earthquake’s impact in certain regions. Here, we analyze users’ global interaction with DYFI to evaluate its accessibility. We employ web analytics to quantify how users access DYFI and perform inference modeling to predict each country’s response rate to DYFI. The panel dataset built for this model combines physical earthquake parameters from the USGS with socioeconomic variables from the World Bank and the Central Intelligence Agency for 151 countries from 2009 to 2020. Our web analytics show that users predominantly access DYFI through mobile devices. Additionally, results from the inference model reveal that socioeconomic parameters, including primary language spoken and GDP per capita, alongside physical earthquake parameters such as average shaking intensity, have a significant effect on a country’s response rate to DYFI. As a result of these two forms of analysis, we establish a tiered ranking of countries to prioritize for improved DYFI awareness and accessibility. This ranking considers regions of the world lacking seismic station coverage that face barriers to DYFI access, such as language, technology, or other factors. Consequently, the USGS has prioritized the evaluation of DYFI's performance on mobile devices and has initiated the incorporation of additional languages into the DYFI system. Furthermore, our analyses suggest specific nations with low response rates could benefit from targeted outreach in conjunction with sister agency partners in each country.

Session: Creating Actionable Earthquake Information Products [Poster Session]

Type: Poster

Date: 5/1/2024

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Elijah

Student Presenter: Yes

Invited Presentation: 

Authors