The ShakeAlert UserDisplay has been developed as a tool to bring Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) alerts to potential users. These warnings can be used as information or to perform an operation that will impact personal safety, provide awareness and reduce losses to critical infrastructures.
In both Northern and Southern California the role of the ShakeAlert Education and Implementation Group is to reach out to potential users of Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) in an effort to recruit them as Beta Testers of the ShakeAlert UserDisplay and provide essential feedback to developers on the perceived benefits, barriers, uses, operational costs and savings to their organization.
The ShakeAlert Education and Implementation Group provides education and support to ShakeAlert UserDisplay prototype users and continues to recruit potential future users.
People
Robert-Michael de Groot, U.S. Geological Survey (chair)
Maximilian Dixon, State of Washington
Kate Long, State of California
Althea Rizzo, State of Oregon
Bill Steele, University of Washington
Jenn Strauss, UC Berkeley (vice chair)
Margaret Vinci, Caltech Seismological Laboratory
Robert A. L. White, Province of British Columbia, Canada
EEW Applications
- Public safety – Get into a safe place to protect yourself
- Employee and emergency responder safety
- Mass transit
- Open elevator doors
- Shut down caustic chemicals
- Notify employees en route
- Lifelines
- Amusement parks
- Schools
- Shut down dangerous operating equipment
- Protect goods from damage and loss, etc.
Manual and Automated Actions
There are three potential tiers of users:
- Automated systems: completely automatic response to EEW alert information
- Manual users: alerts are seen and/or heard by a person
- Output based use (not using UserDisplay): development of new tools to ingest EEW alert information and trigger automatic actions or provide warnings to people
Within the education and outreach programme, Caltech is working with each of these types of user to aid development of the system.
Education
Short-term – The ShakeAlert Education and Implementation Group will assist users in implementing ShakeAlert and educate them on the uses and benefits of earthquake early warning through presentations and hands-on workshops.
Long Term – Work in collaboration with the Caltech Earthquake Research Affiliates and the USGS to provide critical information and updates on the science of earthquakes and on all CISN earthquake tools to assist in the reduction of losses and resiliency of California’s infrastructure.
Public/Private Partnerships – Encourage and facilitate public/private partnerships which will be an integral part of the success of EEW
