Community-based EEW Aotearoa New Zealand

Prof Yih-Min Wu gave an insightful talk on Taiwan's earthquake early warning system during the virtual seminar on 11th June 2020. He discussed the development of the low-cost earthquake early warning and shakemap systems in Taiwan. Video recording of the presentation and the Q&A session afterwards:

Dr Raj Prasanna and Dr Julia Becker talked about earthquake early warning on RNZ. Listen to the podcast here:  https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2018747932/early-warning-for-earthquakes

The original article entitled 'Affordable, community engaged earthquake warning system subject of research project' can be found at  Massey's website . --- A multi-disciplinary team of Massey researchers is to take a design and science approach to explore the development of an earthquake early warning system. The team, led by senior lecturer Dr Raj Prasanna from the Joint Centre for Disaster Research, received funding of just under $150,000 from the University’s strategic investment fund. Dr Prasanna and senior lecturer Dr Julia Becker with several other colleagues from the centre, part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, will work with colleagues from the College of Sciences, Dr Kristin Stock, the College of Creative Arts, Associate Professor Anna Brown and other external agencies, on a project called Building a community of practice towards the conceptualisation of citizen-led low-cost early warning systems. They will engage through workshops wit...

The virtual seminar on 5th May 2020 with Prof Muki Haklay covered an overview of citizen science and links to disaster risk reduction and warnings. Video recording of the first 20-minutes of the presentation: Due to connectivity issues, the latter part of the presentation was not recorded properly. However, the following resources are available: Presentation slides:  [ PDF ] World Bank Report on  Identifying Success Factors in Crowdsourced Geographic Information Use in Government

A new paper has just been published on Earthquake Spectra. David Wald writes about the practical limitations of earthquake early warning. The paper outlines key points for strategic communication, taking into account EEW limitations and possibilities. Points include depicting expected alert times, setting warning expectations based on context (e.g. subduction zone environments, crustal quakes etc.), educating users on taking appropriate (or inappropriate) action when shaking is felt, communicating EEW is not the only mitigation to earthquake losses, offering broader context of other available earthquake hazard and risk information. Access the article: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F8755293020911388 The abstract of the article: Earthquake early warning (EEW) entails detection of initial earthquake shaking and rapid estimation and notification to users prior to imminent, stronger shaking. EEW (ShakeAlert Phase 1, version 2.0) went operational in California in October 2019 and is coming ...

The first workshop for the ‘Community-based Earthquake Early Warning (EEW)’ project was launched on 3rd April 2020. The original format was intended to be kanohi ki te kanohi; a half-day workshop of interested participants on the concept of community-based EEW. However, due to the COVID-19 lockdown, the project team migrated the session to a virtual environment. Nevertheless, the virtual workshop was a success with 29 participants coming online and actively participating in the shortened two-hour session. The first half of workshop had short presentations from Julia Becker on EEW in Aotearoa New Zealand, Alessandro Fascetti on low-cost sensors, Hamish Avery on using sensors in the commercial/industry setting, and Julian Thomson on challenges in using sensors to engage with schools. During the second part of the workshop, the participants engaged in small group discussions in virtual rooms. Facilitated by the project members, the groups discussed the capabilities, values, benefits, ch...