Communicating Earthquake Science in Real Time: Tweets From the Berkeley Seismology Lab

Date: 4/25/2019

Time: 06:00 PM

Room: Fifth Avenue

The Berkeley Seismo Lab’s Twitter feeds, @BerkeleySeismo, @MyShakeApp, and the new @BSLQuakes, have primarily been a successful way of disseminating earthquake information. According to Twitter’s analytics, @BerkeleySeismo’s most popular tweets fall into two categories: information posted just after an earthquake and links to new Seismo Blog entries, which explore a particular topic in more detail. Because the post-earthquake information is so popular, we have created an interface that allows BSL seismologists to rapidly create custom maps following a quake of interest, including the quake mechanism, foreshocks and aftershocks, and important historical quakes or background seismicity from the COMCAT catalog. Our seismologists add value to this quake information by posting the map with their own brief commentary on the quake. @MyShakeApp has been effective in building interest in the MyShake project. Its tweets range from screenshots of waveforms collected by citizen scientists using the app, to maps of quakes “caught” by the app, and include invitations to participate in feedback sessions to improve the user interface. Like our main feed, Twitter analytics indicates that maps created using MyShake user data are by far the most likely to encourage engagement. Our newest feed, @BSLQuakes, rapidly provides information on Northern California earthquakes. Like the @CaltechQuake feed for Southern California, an earthquake’s time, magnitude, distance to the nearest town, and other information are posted automatically within minutes.

Presenting Author: Margaret Hellweg

Authors