Rapid Earthquake Information Dissemination on Social Media: Lessons Learnt From Lastquake

Date: 4/25/2019

Time: 11:30 AM

Room: Vashon

Social networks and smartphone apps are becoming a key component of rapid public earthquake information. Beyond their capacity to efficiently broadcast timely information, they are also an opportunity for the seismological community to better serve societal demands associated with earthquake risk, as well as an opportunity to collect data of scientific interest at little cost.

LastQuake, is a multichannel information system targeting eyewitnesses of global earthquakes. Rather than simply reporting seismically located earthquakes, LastQuake focuses on felt and damaging earthquakes only, regardless their magnitude, identifying them through the immediate online reaction they cause. These crowdsourced-earthquake-detections possess 2 advantages. First, they are very fast, typically few tens of seconds and offer an efficient way to engage with eyewitnesses and initiate efficient felt reports collection. Perhaps more importantly, they are a proxy for the public desire of information and this targeted information-seeking identifies “teachable moments” which can and should be exploited for raising seismological awareness.

Social networks through their 2 way communication channels can identify public expectations and gaps. Safety tips and safety checks were thus implemented in LastQuake following requests received after the 2015 Nepal earthquake. The 2018 Lombok, Indonesia earthquakes illustrated the need to serve not only the local population but also tourists who often fail to find information in their own language. The same year, in Mayotte, it was the impossibility to seismically locate felt earthquakes which led to rumors and conspiracy theories. The aim of this talk is to present lessons learnt from these past events and how we try to take them into account in the evolution of the lastQuake system.

Presenting Author: Remy Bossu

Authors