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<DIV class=article-heading><FONT size=4>Seismology: Quake
catcher</FONT></DIV></HGROUP>
<DIV>With earthquake death tolls rising, Ross Stein is building a global risk
model to mitigate future disasters.</DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=vcard><A class=fn
href="http://www.nature.com/news/seismology-quake-catcher-1.13216?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20130625#auth-1">Joanne
Baker</A></SPAN></DIV><TIME datetime="2013-06-19" pubdate>
<DIV class=pubdate-and-corrections>Nature Volume: 498<SPAN>, </SPAN>Pages:
290–292</DIV>
<DIV class=pubdate-and-corrections>19 June 2013</DIV>
<DIV class=pubdate-and-corrections><A
href="http://www.nature.com/news/seismology-quake-catcher-1.13216?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20130625">http://www.nature.com/news/seismology-quake-catcher-1.13216?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20130625</A></DIV>
<DIV class=pubdate-and-corrections>
<DL class=citation>
<DT>In a darkened room in Pavia, Italy, a jumble of stubby arrows spreads out
across a large screen like a swarm of ants on the march. To Ross Stein, the
marks on this map of the Balkans reveal where earthquakes are most likely to
strike, and he urgently wants to share what he sees.</DT></DL></DIV>
<DIV class=section>
<DIV class="content no-heading cleared main-content">
<P>Stein, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park,
California, jumps up from his chair and runs his hand in an arc down the map.
Seated in the room are eight seismologists from the former Yugoslav republics
and Albania who are analysing their data together for the first time. Ross
explains to them how compression is thrusting rocks upwards along faults in some
areas and pushing them sideways in others. That pent up energy could be released
in devastating tremors, he says, just as it was in July 1963 in Skopje,
Macedonia, killing more than 1,000 people.</P>
<P>Such a comprehensive view of the quake risks in the Balkans has been missing,
in part because researchers there have limited funding and because some nations
prefer to sell geological data rather than disseminate it for free. Two of the
workshop's participants, from Slovenia and Albania, are long-time collaborators
who could not afford to meet face-to-face in the past decade.</P>
<DIV class="related-stories-box box">Stein aims to change all that — in the
Balkans and elsewhere — by bringing people and data together. He is one of the
leaders of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM), an ambitious project to build an
open-source digital network of databases and tools focused on seismic dangers
around the world. By helping nations, businesses and researchers to assess and
minimize risks, Stein hopes to counter the conditions that have led earthquake
death tolls to rise over the past century as cities — many with poor building
practices — have swelled in quake-prone regions.</DIV>
<P>After more than five years in development, GEM is nearing major milestones.
Next week, the project will release a database of quakes that have occurred over
the past millennium, along with a basic version of its software engine,
OpenQuake, which will allow users worldwide to calculate their vulnerability to
seismic shocks. In December, GEM will unveil a list of all known active faults
in the world. “You'd think that our community would have an inventory, but no
one's tried to build one,” Stein says. “That's what GEM plans to do.”</P>
<P>Over the course of 2014, GEM will add in information about buildings and
socio-economic indicators, such as poverty, which could help cities such as
Istanbul in Turkey decide how to prioritize the strengthening of vulnerable
schools and hospitals.</P>
<P>“It's extraordinary to me how much they have accomplished,” says Lori Peek, a
sociologist and co-director of the Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis at
Colorado State University in Fort Collins, whose research has informed the
project.</P>
<P>Leading the GEM effort has marked a major career shift for Stein, a
well-respected researcher who has frequently appeared in the media warning
citizens about quake risks in the United States. Now he is on a much bigger
stage, trying to drum up support for this international project from scientists,
governments and companies. “It's been quite an education,” he admits.<A
name=quakes></A></P>
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class=credit><FONT size=1>SOURCE: GEM</FONT></P></DIV>
<P>And it is far from over. Stein must still complete GEM and demonstrate its
value. Some critics charge that the effort will not save many lives by offering
more sophisticated assessments of seismic risk. Roger Bilham of the University
of Colorado at Boulder says that corruption, ignorance and poverty are much
greater barriers to safety than lack of information about quakes.</P>
<H2>Stressful start</H2>
<P>Stein, 59, got his first big taste of seismology as a teenager in Los
Angeles, when “terra firma became jello” during the 1971 San Fernando Valley
quake, which killed 65 people. But he did not settle on studying Earth science
until his college room-mate at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island,
introduced him to the joys of field trips. Stein started a doctorate in
glaciology at Stanford University in California and endured the “coldest,
wettest, windiest fieldwork”. Then, wanting to pursue a topic with social
impact, he switched to earthquakes after hearing a talk from a USGS scientist.
He joined the agency in 1981.</P>
<P>In his research, Stein has focused on how an earthquake in one spot transfers
stress to other regions. His modelling efforts have provided a means of
estimating whether tremors will increase or decrease the likelihood of
earthquakes elsewhere.</P>
<P>That and other work, notably in Turkey and Japan, made Stein the second most
highly cited earthquake scientist from 1993 to 2003. And his impact has spread
far beyond the research community. He has appeared in numerous documentaries and
is often in front of a camera after a large quake.</P>
<P>Stein's research trajectory was drastically altered by the 2004
Sumatra–Andaman earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people in
14 countries. That event, he says, “crystallized our failure as a community” by
revealing how little scientists had done to help the region to prepare for the
hazards expected in that area. “In some ways I felt there was blood on my
hands,” says Stein.</P>
<P>He decided that it was more important to address seismic risks in poor
countries than in California or Japan, where a long tradition of research and
strong building codes has already reduced dangers. From Jakarta to
Port-au-Prince, urban populations are skyrocketing near major faults and along
tectonic-plate boundaries. The influx of people is filling poorly constructed
houses that become death traps in quakes, Stein says. Seismologists predict
that, before long, a large shock will kill a million people.</P>
<P>In 2006, after an earthquake workshop in Potsdam, Germany, Stein and two
other seismic-risk experts — Jochen Zschau at the Helmholtz Centre in Potsdam
and Domenico Giardini of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich
— decided to combat that trend by setting up GEM.</P>
<P>A raft of international, governmental and non-governmental organizations
already helps at-risk communities to prepare for and respond to quakes, but
those efforts are fragmented. The Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance
(OFDA), which sponsored Stein's Balkan workshop, helped to develop a tsunami
warning system in Indonesia after the 2004 event and is running seismic projects
in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And GeoHazards International (GHI), a
non-profit organization based in Menlo Park, has worked in more than 20
countries to raise awareness and train construction engineers in quake safety.
But no single organization can span every town and city, and no country can
afford to reinforce or insure every building. Knowing where risk is highest is
key, Stein says.</P>
<P>Information is also splintered. Peek, who advises the GHI, participated in a
study for the GEM consortium that showed that communities from San Francisco,
California, to Chincha in Peru all need a central resource on earthquake risks —
one that pools data on seismic threats, construction issues, and economic and
social factors. That would help local officials to prioritize which public
buildings or regions to strengthen, and allow emerging cities such as Kathmandhu
or Lima to plan how to grow without increasing their seismic risk.</P>
<P>GEM aims to provide that resource through OpenQuake. Built using a
geographical information system, this platform will include analytical tools
that allow anyone — scientists, governments and companies — to estimate the
chances of economic and human losses from earthquakes (see <A
href="http://www.nature.com/news/seismology-quake-catcher-1.13216?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20130625#quakes">'Trouble
spots'</A>).</P>
<P>The calculators will draw on the GEM's global databases of quakes, faults,
housing types and socio-economic information, which are being rolled out over
the next 18 months. In January, GEM released a reference catalogue of more than
20,000 global earthquakes of magnitude 5.5 and above that have occurred since
1900. To produce it, the consortium reanalysed all the seismic data involved,
improving estimates of earthquake epicentres and magnitudes. It is the biggest
resource of its type and has allowed seismologists to see, among other things,
how seismic activity concentrates on a major fault below Guatemala, says
Stein.</P>
<P>To get the project off the ground, Stein and his collaborators had to
persuade funders to back the plan. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD), which sponsored the Potsdam workshop where
the GEM idea was seeded, gave Stein and the founders access to governments
officials. In the wake of the Sumatran tsunami and a major quake in Pakistan,
OECD member states in high-risk regions wanted to minimize their exposure to
giant economic losses.</P>
<DIV class="pullquote pullquote-left">
<DIV class=pullquote-sleeve>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>“We will face abuse. Some governments will push back against GEM's
assessments.”</P></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></DIV>
<P>Stein's contacts grew from there. In 2007, Munich Re became the first company
to get involved, giving €5 million (US$6.6 million) over five years. It saw an
opportunity in the global data being collected by GEM, which could help
insurance companies and reinsurance brokers to diversify their portfolio to
avoid being wiped out by a single earthquake.</P>
<P>Today, 16 governmental agencies, such as the OFDA, and 10 insurance and
engineering companies have joined GEM, which is a non-profit public–private
partnership headquartered in Pavia and has some 20 staff. These sponsors have
contributed more than 90% of the €24 million needed to release the full
OpenQuake platform, which is planned for November 2014. In addition, nine
organizations, including the World Bank, have become associate non-paying
members.</P>
<P>Dealing with the disparate interests has been a steep learning curve for
Stein. “All have a stake,” he says, and “issues to champion”. At GEM board
meetings, he says, the different sectors sit in groups around a U-shaped table —
the countries on one arm, companies on the other and the non-governmental
organizations in the centre.</P>
<P>Some scientists, however, are unhappy that companies have a seat at the table
at all. “Suppose you could manipulate hazard forecasts to justify higher
quake-insurance premiums in built-up areas,” muses Robert Geller at the
University of Tokyo. But Stein is pragmatic. “If you are talking to a finance
minister you have to talk about economics or they won't pay attention,” he
says.</P>
<P>To be widely used and trusted, Stein says that GEM must be seen as
independent, transparent and accessible. That's why OpenQuake uses open-source
software — and why GEM plans to give away the project's data and products to
anyone, including the public, scientists and governments, if they are engaged in
non-commercial work. Companies wanting to use the data commercially will need to
sponsor the organization. Governmental agencies are asked to make a contribution
that is proportional to their total investment in research and development. For
Ecuador, that runs to €15,000 per year, whereas Germany is paying €275,000
annually.</P>
<P>The founders hope that banks and companies will join in order to build new
markets or products. They could use GEM data and tools to develop 'catastrophe
bonds', a type of insurance in which investors take the risk in return for
payments if a specified event does not occur. Companies have offered such bonds
since the mid-1990s, but governments are now getting in on the act. Earlier this
year, a group including the Turkish government issued a bond that will release
US$400 million if Istanbul experiences a major shock in the next three
years.</P>
<H2>Science diplomacy</H2>
<P>Stein, who chairs GEM's scientific advisory board, has to do more than
marshal the seismic data and models. He is part of the human glue that melds the
sectors together, a post that requires the skills of a diplomat and a
salesman.</P>
<P>Both skill sets were on display at the Balkan workshop, where the assembled
seismologists began arguing over funding inequities and other problems in
previous regional initiatives to analyse earthquake risk. At one point, some
participants shouted at each other across the table. Stein let them have their
say and then stepped in to calm the waters. He asked each in turn to express
their views and offered to visit each country that autumn, to convince
government officials and university heads to back the researchers.</P>
<P>As GEM becomes more visible, Stein knows that he will have to contend with
critics. Some members of the seismology community say that it is misleading to
map hazards on the basis of past earthquakes because the historical record is
too short, and large earthquakes often occur where none has previously been
witnessed. In northeastern Japan, for example, risk maps for the Tohoku region
did not anticipate a monster quake of the size that struck in 2011. Other
researchers, such as Bilham, question whether the project's engineering goals
will ever be enacted; they argue that many countries already have adequate
building codes but fail to enforce them — so better risk models won't help.</P>
<P>Stein has dealt with some of the criticism by inviting naysayers to
participate in GEM. Seth Stein (no relation), a seismologist at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois, who is a long-standing opponent of some
seismic-hazard maps (see <A href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/479166a"><SPAN
class=source-title>Nature</SPAN> <SPAN class=volume>479</SPAN>, <SPAN
class=start-page>166</SPAN>–<SPAN class=end-page>170</SPAN>; 2011</A>), attended
a GEM workshop. Although Seth Stein sees GEM's open-source, standardized and
modular approach as “a good step in the right direction”, he also hopes that the
seismology community will take advantage of the resource to do broader analyses
exploring the limitations of seismic-hazard analysis.</P>
<P>Looking forward, Ross Stein seems most concerned about securing funding. GEM
will need more subscribers to pay for the curation and updating of its databases
in the future and is seeking a further €10 million to fund allied regional
programmes to enhance the local detail of the risk databases. To attract and
retain sponsors over the long term, the project must keep rolling out useful
features on related risks — such as models including tsunamis, landslides and
liquefaction, which happens when seismic shaking weakens soil to a point at
which it begins to behave like a fluid.</P>
<P>The most difficult challenge long term, however, may be handling the backlash
over risks identified by GEM. Stein says that GEM “is not an advocacy
organization” and will not get involved in policy decisions on the basis of its
assessment. Even so, “we will face abuse”, Stein accepts. “Some governments will
push back against GEM's assessments because they differ from their
priorities.”</P>
<P>In Pavia, as the Balkan workshop winds up, Stein practises the diplomatic
skills he will need to make GEM succeed. Moving beyond the earlier rancorous
discussion, he suggests that all the participants write a joint publication and
apply to the OFDA for funds to enable them to meet again in six months. All the
seismologists pledge to continue the collaboration. Such a meeting will be
essential “if we want to build a harmonized model for the whole Balkan area”,
says Barbara Sket Motnikar of the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana.</P>
<P>Three weeks later, the OFDA agrees to fund a second workshop for the group.
The decision underscores some of Stein's parting words to the Balkan
seismologists: “Never underestimate the power of your enthusiasm.”</P></DIV>
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