Challenges and Opportunities for Communication During an Energetic Aftershock Sequence: The 26 November 2019 M6.4 Albanian Earthquake

Session: Weathering the Earthquake Storms: Crisis Communication Following Major Events
Type: Oral
Date: 4/28/2020
Time: 11:00 AM
Room: 215 + 220
Description: 

On Nov. 26, 2019 Albania was struck by a deadly M6.4 earthquake which was followed by an energetic aftershock sequence with more than 200 felt aftershocks in 7 days. We present how the LastQuake information system (a system comprising websites, a Twitter quakebot and a smartphone app) was adopted and how it performed in terms of serving public desire for information and efficient crowdsourcing of information.

These earthquakes led to a massive adoption of the LastQuake app, with active users (i.e. persistent installations of the app) reaching 5% of Albania population. Even If public satisfaction for the information services was high, the rapid succession of felt earthquakes associated with large numbers of new users not attuned to the service’s features was challenging in terms of clarity of information and easy association of felt reports with the correct events. On Twitter, the main topic was about the possible evolution of the seismicity, a topic fueled by prediction claims. At a time when early warning, operational aftershock forecasts are being discussed and implemented, communication on prediction can be challenging and highlighted the need for a clear & concise statement that could be easily shared after damaging earthquakes.

Situational awareness was rapidly improved thanks to data gathered by LastQuake system. The first cue about the existence of damage was derived within 8 min of the earthquake occurrence (before the seismic location was available) through the lack of app users’ reaction within 20 km of the epicenter. It was then supported by the rapid impact scenario, then by the felt report analysis and finally within about an hour through the first crowdsourced geo-located pictures of damage. These results indicate that seismology can directly benefit from improved public interaction by fast cost-effective collection of valuable information and data on earthquake impact while better fulfilling the strong public desire for information after widely felt earthquakes.

Presenting Author: Remy Bossu

Authors