Cool article! It's not common that interesting meets urgent — many EA cause areas are in "boring but effective" topics like mosquito nets, but this combines stimulating engineering with compelling impact. It ought to be seriously considered by funders as a cause area
I think it would be great to have more funding for longshot earthquake prediction projects, but this article doesn’t really do a very good job capturing the current state of the field. The reason that earthquake prediction doesn’t get much funding is that people tried for decades to find earthquake precursors without success and no one is sure it’s even possible. Probably it’s worth additional research anyway given new methods and datasets, but another reason it hasn’t been a focus is that we have methods of significantly reducing earthquake fatalities that we know work. The first is seismic retrofitting. We know that buildings constructed to modern standards are capable of withstanding large earthquakes—it doesn’t matter that one hasn’t happened on the US west coast because it’s been tested in places like Japan that have had earthquakes in modern times. The problem is that old buildings weren’t constructed to the same standards and it’s expensive to retrofit them. But work on this has been steadily progressing. The west coast of the US has also recently implemented earthquake early warning, which doesn’t predict earthquakes, but which can give seconds of warning between when an earthquake happens and when it reaches a population center—enough for people to duck, cover, and hold on. Again, more warning would of course be better, but it wouldn’t be as much of a game changer as this article suggests. Finally, if someone does want to pursue this research, seismologists are generally very good about data sharing and the vast majority of seismic data is freely accessible on the internet. DAS data is less accessible because the data quantities are too large to practically store and distribute, but there are a lot of new DAS projects that I’m sure would be happy to partner with someone interested in the data.
I question whether "stepping outside" is recommended to avoid injury in a California earthquake. Back in the 1990s, my L.A. workplace had an earthquake safety briefing from a fire department representative and the first piece of advice he gave was STAY INSIDE. The argument was that you are at greater danger from falling debris and power lines outside than you are in a building that conforms to modern earthquake safety regulations. In the intervening decades, many more L.A. buildings have improved their earthquake resistance.
Given the Republicans' war on California, I don't see any money for related research coming from the government. Maybe it's time to talk up the dangers of the New Madrid fault, which threatens more red states... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_seismic_zone
Why would a centralized laboratory would be more effective than a set of competing labs? I always think back to how the Human Genome Project competed with Celera to accelerate innovations.
"Each of these components is feasible and all are being accomplished on a small scale by individual labs, but with limited coordination or data orchestration and nowhere near enough money"
Yikes! Between Yellowstone and the California faults, the west is sitting on a timebomb. Thanks for this interesting and somewhat terrifying article!
Cool article! It's not common that interesting meets urgent — many EA cause areas are in "boring but effective" topics like mosquito nets, but this combines stimulating engineering with compelling impact. It ought to be seriously considered by funders as a cause area
I think it would be great to have more funding for longshot earthquake prediction projects, but this article doesn’t really do a very good job capturing the current state of the field. The reason that earthquake prediction doesn’t get much funding is that people tried for decades to find earthquake precursors without success and no one is sure it’s even possible. Probably it’s worth additional research anyway given new methods and datasets, but another reason it hasn’t been a focus is that we have methods of significantly reducing earthquake fatalities that we know work. The first is seismic retrofitting. We know that buildings constructed to modern standards are capable of withstanding large earthquakes—it doesn’t matter that one hasn’t happened on the US west coast because it’s been tested in places like Japan that have had earthquakes in modern times. The problem is that old buildings weren’t constructed to the same standards and it’s expensive to retrofit them. But work on this has been steadily progressing. The west coast of the US has also recently implemented earthquake early warning, which doesn’t predict earthquakes, but which can give seconds of warning between when an earthquake happens and when it reaches a population center—enough for people to duck, cover, and hold on. Again, more warning would of course be better, but it wouldn’t be as much of a game changer as this article suggests. Finally, if someone does want to pursue this research, seismologists are generally very good about data sharing and the vast majority of seismic data is freely accessible on the internet. DAS data is less accessible because the data quantities are too large to practically store and distribute, but there are a lot of new DAS projects that I’m sure would be happy to partner with someone interested in the data.
I question whether "stepping outside" is recommended to avoid injury in a California earthquake. Back in the 1990s, my L.A. workplace had an earthquake safety briefing from a fire department representative and the first piece of advice he gave was STAY INSIDE. The argument was that you are at greater danger from falling debris and power lines outside than you are in a building that conforms to modern earthquake safety regulations. In the intervening decades, many more L.A. buildings have improved their earthquake resistance.
Given the Republicans' war on California, I don't see any money for related research coming from the government. Maybe it's time to talk up the dangers of the New Madrid fault, which threatens more red states... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_seismic_zone
Why would a centralized laboratory would be more effective than a set of competing labs? I always think back to how the Human Genome Project competed with Celera to accelerate innovations.
"Each of these components is feasible and all are being accomplished on a small scale by individual labs, but with limited coordination or data orchestration and nowhere near enough money"