Earthquake School in the Cloud: Citizen Seismologists in Taiwan

Liang, Wen‐Tzong; Chen, Kate Huihsuan; Wu, Yu Han; Yen, Eric; Chang, Chun Yen

doi:10.1785/0220150061

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The spectrum of actors involved in citizen seismology is broadening. While only amateur seismologists or eyewitnesses used to be involved, it tends to grow beyond age and universally, including also children in schools (Liang et al, 2016;Subedi et al, 2020), and entire communities (Calais et al, 2018), implying that prior knowledge and interest levels may be relatively low. Furthermore, new and more independent actors have since appeared in the field.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2020

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Starting the 10th May 2018, a series of earthquakes has hit Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean. Facing a lack of seismic data, scientific information and communication from the authorities, the inhabitants took advantage of social media to develop, on their own, a citizen seismology group, composed of more than 10,000 people. Due to a particular cultural context, this was carried out mainly without the seismologist community. While some citizens did share seismological information (and eventually volcanology information when it was discovered that the earthquakes were caused by a newborn , undersea volcano), the lack of seismologists in the group also lead to the emergence of misinformation and even conspiracy theories. This mistrusting atmosphere had negative consequences for the way various seismological organizations were perceived, including LastQuake, a crowdsource-based earthquake information app which allows eyewitnesses to share information about earthquakes they felt, combined with seismic data. However, due to the lack of seismic data for these earthquakes, some were not displayed in the app. This lack of information and understanding of how the system functioned led to additional mistrust toward this citizen seismology tool. This paper combines sociological observations with an empirical approach. First, a sociological analysis of this independent citizen science network enables an identification of the reasons for its creation and the pitfalls caused by the absence of collaboration with the scientific community. Then, an empirical case study of the LastQuake system exposes how it has been improved to offer information, while admittedly more incomplete, is nevertheless closer to citizens' needs. It concludes that citizen seismology requires a stronger collaboration between citizens' and scientists' communities in order to be more efficient. It also advocates for scientific communication that takes into account cultural context from the beginning.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2020

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“…A regional Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) server in Taiwan was built to promote citizen seismology [68]. Liang, Chen, Wu, Yen, and Chang operated the Citizen Seismologists in Taiwan Project (CSTaiwan), which was designed to make recorded QCN seismic data useful in classrooms, and to elevate the quality of earthquake science education [69]. The current study showed that participants have already formed earth science and natural disaster related scientific opinions, which to an extent reflects the positive outcome of current educational efforts in the field of earth science and natural disasters.…”

Section: Discussion and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Merging Science Education into Communication: Developing and Validating a Scale for Science Edu-Communication Utilizing Awareness, Enjoyment, Interest, Opinion formation, and Understanding Dimensions (SEC-AEIOU)

Chang

2019

Sustainability

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For better understanding of how the public perceive the information in science communication; this study sought to develop the scale of Science Edu-Communication (SEC), an instrument to measure AEIOU: Awareness; Enjoyment; Interest; Opinion formation; and Understanding. The AEIOU framework was adopted for use as the major component of SEC to depict participants’ general perceptions of science communication from their daily life experiences. Responses from 121 participants were analysed using exploratory factor analysis; item discrimination; and qualitative coding analysis. Results support SEC-AEIOU as a valid and reliable instrument to measure the effectiveness of science communication experiences. Additionally; SEC-AEIOU can serve as a framework for research and practice to bridge science communication and science education. In particular; science communicators; educators; and institutions that engage in science communication and educational activities may benefit from such a metric. This scale seeks to assist in building a robust framework to facilitate the trend of bridging science communication and science education: Science Edu-Communication.

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“…(left) Epicenters issued by CWB, (middle) a rapid earthquake report issued by CWB, (right) shaking intensity revealed at every QCN site. with the QCN project, initiated by Stanford University, to form an educational strong motion network in Taiwan [23]. Although the traditional seismic networks operated by CWB [3] have covered all of Taiwan, the recorded waveform data is not accessible in a real-time manner.…”

Section: Quake-catcher Network (Qcn-taiwan)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Citizen Seismologists in Taiwan project has been conducted to elevate the quality of earthquake science education by incorporating earthquake and tsunami stories and educational earthquake games into traditional school curricula. The project aims to build a cloud-based computing service incorporating an earthquake school, where teachers can easily teach their students about earthquakes and children can learn about earthquakes in a fun environment [23,28]. In addition to the teaching resources designed in this project, a near real-time earthquake game competition has been implemented for users to learn how to determine the epicenter location, shake map, magnitude and even the first-motion focal mechanism [23,28].…”

Section: Earthquake School In the Cloudmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The project aims to build a cloud-based computing service incorporating an earthquake school, where teachers can easily teach their students about earthquakes and children can learn about earthquakes in a fun environment [23,28]. In addition to the teaching resources designed in this project, a near real-time earthquake game competition has been implemented for users to learn how to determine the epicenter location, shake map, magnitude and even the first-motion focal mechanism [23,28]. This brand new experiment has attracted many high school teachers to include this activity in their teaching curricula.…”

Section: Earthquake School In the Cloudmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Citizen Earthquake Science in Taiwan: From Science to Hazard Mitigation

Liang

Lee

Chen³

et al. 2017

JDR

Self Cite

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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.

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Earthquake School in the Cloud: Citizen Seismologists in Taiwan

Cited by 10 publications

References 8 publications

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

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

Merging Science Education into Communication: Developing and Validating a Scale for Science Edu-Communication Utilizing Awareness, Enjoyment, Interest, Opinion formation, and Understanding Dimensions (SEC-AEIOU)

Citizen Earthquake Science in Taiwan: From Science to Hazard Mitigation

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