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Creating Earthquake Early Warning Post-Alert Information Products: Harnessing Existing Earthquake Information Tools to Depict Alerting Efficacy

Description: 

Here, we leverage existing post-earthquake information products to explore and develop graphical representations that depict earthquake early warning (EEW) alert performance, targeting components that will satisfy both technical and public audiences. Existing post-earthquake information products (including ShakeMap, "Did You Feel It?" [DYFI], and PAGER) offer proven examples of communicating the complexity of earthquake shaking and its impacts. Communicating the efficacy (accuracy and timeliness) of EEW alerts brings additional challenges, as quantifying and summarizing alert timeliness are not straightforward. For EEW systems like the ShakeAlert system for the West Coast of the United States, EEW alert information is updated as the earthquake progresses and alerts are issued via multiple platforms using various alert thresholds, so no single map can readily communicate EEW alert efficacy. We thus need to reconcile comprehensive reporting against agreeable visualizations. By considering ShakeMap shaking estimates—constrained by DYFI-reported intensities and station observations—as a baseline for ground-truth experiences, we quantify how many potential recipients there were of timely versus late and missed alerts with respect to the actual shaking experienced. The maps and other visualizations we propose could be a first step toward communicating objective and quantifiable alerting successes while putting the alerting challenges into a spatial perspective. Coupled with reports of users' alerting experiences, reactions, and perceived utility (Goltz et al., this meeting), we can examine EEW alerting efficacy quantitatively and qualitatively. By leveraging existing, familiar technologies and data already produced—augmented with depictions of warning timeliness—post-event EEW information follow-up products we put forward could be both intuitive and informative, helping people connect what just happened regarding EEW alerts with the shaking they felt from the earthquake.

Session: Creating Actionable Earthquake Information Products [Poster Session]

Type: Poster

Date: 5/1/2024

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Jessie

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors