Citizen Earthquake Science in Taiwan: From Science to Hazard Mitigation

Abstract

Taiwan is located at the convergent plate boundary between the Eurasian and the Philippine Sea plates. As a result, intense earthquake activity and associated surface deformation are manifesting in this region. To implement and promote citizen earthquake science in Taiwan, we have developed several web-based platforms with multi-purpose themes, such as earthquake science information, popular science education, and crowdsourcing systems. First, with the rapid earthquake report issued from the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau (CWB), the available near real-time scientific results obtained from the Taiwanese seismology community are collected and published to a platform, the Taiwan Earthquake Science Information System (TESIS). The scientific information archived at TESIS includes CWB earthquake reports, focal mechanisms, shake maps, and finite source models (for strong earthquakes). All real-time results are integrated into a GIS system with background geospatial information, such as geological maps, traces of active faults, background seismicity, and inter-seismic GPS velocity fields. Second, by collaborating with Stanford University to maintain a regional Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) server in Taiwan, we have promoted citizen seismology in Asia by bringing earthquake information and scientific knowledge to the public. More than 200 school teachers have already installed the QCN sensors in Internet-enabled computers. Through two web-based educational platforms, users are able to access the guidelines and further interact with the recorded waveforms. Third, we also developed an earthquake damage reporting system – the Taiwan Scientific Earthquake Reporting (TSER) system – to encourage the citizen to collect field observation for significant earthquake-induced ground damages such as surface fault rupture, landslide, rock fall, liquefaction, and landslide-triggered dam or lake. The TSER system is constructed under the Ushahidi mapping platform, which has been widely used in crowdsourcing for the geospatial archiving of events. Trained high school teachers and public volunteers can send their ground damage observations, including photographs, through the TSER system. Most of these products and online systems are now being operated by the Taiwan Earthquake Research Center (TEC). With these newly developed platforms and materials, we aim to not only raise earthquake awareness and preparedness, but also encourage public participation in earthquake science in Taiwan.

Citizen Seismology Without Seismologists? Lessons Learned From Mayotte Leading to Improved Collaboration

“…Starting as passive observers, citizens have become more and more involved. They can now report earthquakes or damages (Wald et al, 2012), help with measurements or computation, learn how to locate earthquakes or take an active role in risk reduction activities (Liang et al, 2017). Recent projects also study the opportunity to engage citizens in order to augment data at little cost, in both Haiti (Calais et al, 2018) and at a global scale (Finazzi, 2016;Bossu et al, 2018).…”

A CitSci Approach for Rapid Earthquake Intensity Mapping: A Case Study from Istanbul (Turkey)

“…On the other hand, only the data of the Marmara Region were employed in the analysis and the results. Similarly, the Taiwan Scientific Earthquake Reporting System (TSER) provides training to their users in order to ensure the data quality [21]. The difficulties in determining the volunteers' profiles (e.g., background, knowledge and skills, etc.)…”

“…Liang et al [21] aimed to increase their contribution to earthquake research by raising the awareness of Taiwanese people on earthquakes through the applications they developed. In this way, with the awareness of the public, frequent earthquakes in Taiwan can be survived with least damage.…”

Development of a Citsci and Artificial Intelligence Supported Gis Platform for Landslide Data Collection

“…The purpose of the project was supporting decision makers with the real-time flood situations obtained from the social media. Liang et al (2017) have developed CitSci based platform to obtain ground observations during earthquake and integrate available real-time earthquake information with the geospatial data to contribute earthquake science. Cochran et al (2009) have presented Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) project which aims to increase the number of seismic stations by using volunteers' computing resource as a seismic station to obtain information about large earthquakes through faster and accurate way.…”