TY - JOUR
AB - Aftab Khan, Paul Denton, Remy Bossu and John Stevenson report on a lively and fruitful EduCitiSeis2018 – the first international discussion workshop for Educational and Citizen Seismology. Most of what we know about Earth's structure, dynamics, hazards, resources and exploration for raw materials comes from seismology. But it is only recently, thanks to cheap computers and the internet, that it has become possible to introduce the subject in schools and include live displays in museums and geoparks for the general public. As the educational value of the subject is becoming more widely appreciated, the need for this international discussion workshop for Educational and Citizen Seismology became apparent (see box “Details of the meeting – and the next ones”). The meeting was a forum for experts in educational and citizen seismology to meet, discuss areas of mutual interest and discover potential synergies and future collaborations (figure 1). It aimed for a balance between talks and discussion or demonstration sessions. There were keynote addresses from those most experienced in developing equipment and running school and citizen seismology programmes, in order to facilitate future collaboration and encourage the growing number of institutions around the globe interested in developing such programmes. There were breakout discussion groups on motivating leaders and maintaining engagement, hardware and software development, data sharing standards and archiving. 1 View largeDownload slide Delegates at the meeting examine each other's seismometers. 1 View largeDownload slide Delegates at the meeting examine each other's seismometers. Worldwide overview In the USA, school seismology emerged from the IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) consortium, funded by the National Science Foundation since 1992 (Braile et al. 2003). IRIS was developed to meet the demands of scientists in universities and research institutions for large numbers of instruments, operators and software in a wide variety of projects. In the UK, seismology in schools has been overseen and supported by the British Geological Survey under the direction of Paul Denton, who developed the interest while he was at the University of Leicester where the national pool of seismic equipment is housed and maintained (Denton 2008). In 2017, a new EU Horizon 2020 funded project SERA (Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe) was approved, including support for school seismology groups from UK, France, Switzerland, Romania, Portugal and Greece to work closely together, with specific interests in developing collaborations and finding synergies with the growing citizen science movement involved in seismology (Zollo et al. 2014). Within Europe, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) has led the way in citizen seismology with smartphone and web-based activities. The worldwide educational potential of the activity is indicated by the support provided by UNESCO. The 18 countries represented at the meeting have been doing school seismology in various ways, some for decades and some just starting. Groups usually include seismologists from a local university or regional network working with teachers and officers from national educational bodies. We are also seeing the emergence of amateur seismologists as the cost of simple instruments and computers – including smartphones – are now affordable (figure 4). There were senior participants who had retired from the seismic instrument industry and now apply their expertise to making affordable versions of sophisticated observatory instruments for school and amateur use. Each group has a slightly different motivation for setting up its project. In countries with high seismicity, a strong motivation is education of the population about seismic hazard and risk. In the case of citizen projects this also spreads into a motivation to move towards integration with earthquake early warning systems. In countries with low seismicity, the educational motivation is more towards a desire to stimulate interest in geoscience at school level and hence build capacity in geosciences at graduate level. More broadly, the Earth has been used as a stimulating laboratory for introducing many physics concepts including gravity, magnetism, electricity and radioactivity. But only recently has it been possible to include the many physical concepts embraced by the propagation, detection and analysis of seismic waves which have had complex paths through the Earth. School seismology therefore has a role to play in stimulating more students to study physics and mathematics at school. The talks The first keynote address was given by Remy Bossu (secretary general of EMSC) on “Why is LastQuake a successful citizen science project?” LastQuake is an app that users launch when they feel an earthquake (Bossu et al. 2018). The location of the phone launching the app is immediately plotted on a map at a data centre (figure 2). Eyewitnesses act as seismic sensors: they feel the ground shaking and, by launching the app (or visiting the websites), report the time and location of their observation. The response is very fast and, as more people respond, a dotted area emerges, outlining the affected area and providing a lot of useful information about the origin of the earthquake (figure 3). 2 View largeDownload slide Density by region of the 13.9 million LastQuake app launches from May 2015 to end of December 2017. Users are present at different levels in all seismically active regions of the globe (except China, where access to Google and Apple stores is not granted). 2 View largeDownload slide Density by region of the 13.9 million LastQuake app launches from May 2015 to end of December 2017. Users are present at different levels in all seismically active regions of the globe (except China, where access to Google and Apple stores is not granted). 3 View largeDownload slide A plot generated by LastQuake. Each dot represents a unique app launch within 180 s of the M5.6 earthquake (star), at 91 km of depth, in Romania on 27 December 2016. The colours show the delay from the occurrence of the quake. The first launch happened 36 s after the quake, knowing that the P wave (the first seismic waves) reached the ground surface in 12.7 s and the S wave (the more energetic wave) did so in 22.2 s. There were 931 launches within 180 s. The circles represent the front of the P and S waves after 60 s. 3 View largeDownload slide A plot generated by LastQuake. Each dot represents a unique app launch within 180 s of the M5.6 earthquake (star), at 91 km of depth, in Romania on 27 December 2016. The colours show the delay from the occurrence of the quake. The first launch happened 36 s after the quake, knowing that the P wave (the first seismic waves) reached the ground surface in 12.7 s and the S wave (the more energetic wave) did so in 22.2 s. There were 931 launches within 180 s. The circles represent the front of the P and S waves after 60 s. Messages can be sent to app users saying where the earthquake is and this in turn generates more responses. The response pattern is complicated by the magnitude of a particular quake. For large earthquakes there is a “doughnut effect” in the form of a blank zone near the epicentre where people know there is an earthquake and don't need to launch the app to find out where it is – although they may call for advice, which is readily provided. Magnitudes can be estimated qualitatively as small, medium or large. LastQuake provides an exciting demonstration of how useful apps can be in contributing to risk reduction. The second keynote talk was one of the meeting highlights, presented by Angel Rodriguez (Panama) on the past, present and future of the Raspberry Shake (http://www.raspberryshake.org, figure 4c), a sensor digitizer that can detect and record short-period (0.5–15 Hz) earthquakes. This project arose from a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2016 by seismologists in Panama and already has more than 600 participants across the world, recording and sharing seismic data on inexpensive Raspberry Pi/geophone-based sensors. Raspberry Shake can record earthquakes from about magnitude 2 and higher within a radius of 80 km, and magnitude 4 and higher in a radius of 240 km. It also records earthquakes of larger magnitudes further away, but with greater loss of information. The hardware could hardly be cheaper – a Raspberry Pi costs around £20–£40. The software, however, is dear, although it is comprehensive and easy to use. In just 14 months, more than 500 stations have been installed, 133 of these in Europe. It is cheap and fun to use for vibrations ranging from washing machines, goals at football matches (see the RAS 200 project Geophysics in a Box, discussed on page 4.14) and pop concerts, to small tremors from earthquakes and volcanoes. It is affordable by amateurs and has obvious application in citizen and school seismology. Raspberry Shakes can be deployed in large numbers and detect earthquakes too small to be picked up by regional networks. 4 View largeDownload slide Citizen seismometers. High-quality sealed observatory-type seismometers are not ideal for use by non-specialists; instead, a variety of small, simple, comprehensible – and low cost – seismometers and software have been developed across the globe. They range from replicas of the Milne–Shaw type (a), or TC1 types (b)through those using Slinkies and Lego building blocks, to smartphones used for detection and communication. The advent of the Raspberry Pi offers another option, as used in the Raspberry Shake (c). Data from these varied devices are pooled and stored at data centres to facilitate information exchange and discussion. 4 View largeDownload slide Citizen seismometers. High-quality sealed observatory-type seismometers are not ideal for use by non-specialists; instead, a variety of small, simple, comprehensible – and low cost – seismometers and software have been developed across the globe. They range from replicas of the Milne–Shaw type (a), or TC1 types (b)through those using Slinkies and Lego building blocks, to smartphones used for detection and communication. The advent of the Raspberry Pi offers another option, as used in the Raspberry Shake (c). Data from these varied devices are pooled and stored at data centres to facilitate information exchange and discussion. The keynote presentation by Richard Allen (director of the Berkeley Seismology Lab) on “Earthquake alerts from crowdsource sensing” followed a similar theme. They have developed an app that uses the myriad of data from the accelerometers in smartphones to create alerts using its remarkable ability to distinguish earthquake signals from the much larger ones resulting from the noise arising from the motion of the smartphone carried by the user (Kong et al. 2016). The network detection algorithm MyShake can confirm that an earthquake is underway and estimate the location and magnitude in real time. This information can then be used to issue an alert of forthcoming ground shaking. MyShake could be used to enhance earthquake early warning (EEW) systems in regions with traditional networks, and could provide the only EEW capability in regions without. In addition, the seismic waveforms recorded could be used to deliver rapid microseism maps, study impacts etc. In the USA, alerts were generated for earthquakes of magnitudes down to 1.6. The potential for this approach was shown by an earthquake in Nepal, where there are few conventional seismic stations but several million smartphones. The USA John Taber (director of education and public outreach in IRIS) gave the third keynote presentation, on the comprehensive “Educational Seismology programme in the USA”. Its activities ranged from formal educational and professional development to less formal activities on the web, and displays using social media for the general public. The programmes started from Princeton University in 1992 with 80 schools using low-cost versions of the Guralp feedback seismometer, an instrument widely used in observatories. The AMASEIS software was developed to permit real-time streaming of data to a data centre for use in locating and studying earthquakes. Schools anywhere in the world can register to download and upload data from and to the system. This has enormous educational value. Over the years, regional networks have developed in the USA with tens of schools whose teachers work with seismologists in the classroom. In Indiana there is an annual student research symposium in which school students value spending a day at the campus and presenting their data. Teachers value linking with universities which, in turn, benefit from making contact with high-quality students. There is ongoing collaboration with the UK and Ireland. More than 150 US schools and 200 international schools use the IRIS facility. There is a plan to expand it to include the MarsQuake data to be returned by the InSight mission which launched in May. Problems encountered in the US and elsewhere include overcoming firewalls in schools, and the lack of teacher continuity, which can interrupt networks in which teachers help each other. A different kind of school project was described in the keynote talk by Michelle Salmon (Australian National University): “AUSIS, the Australian School Seismic Network”, a partnership between research and outreach (Balfour et al. 2014). Research-quality Guralp seismometers are installed in schools and connected to school computers, but also used to increase the density of the country's sparse monitoring network. So far, 47 schools have such instruments. There are some problems arising from the fact that the hardware and software are not ideal for schools, and the schools themselves are sometimes too remote for interaction with seismologists. A lot of useful contacts and suggestions were made at the meeting to improve the working of this partnership. The school programme in New Zealand was rather different. A talk on “Ru-: the New Zealand Network for Seismology in Schools” was presented via video link by Kasper van Wijk (University of Auckland). There is a strong cultural link in New Zealand with the Earth, because complicated belts of high seismic and volcanic activity define plate boundaries that go through the country. There is a history of large earthquakes and data from the national network Geonet are accessible, as are those from the US Geological Survey. The school seismometers are based on Slinkies with magnets at the end and connected to a Raspberry Pi running Jamaseis software. The students were involved in assembling 17 school seismometers from kits that were distributed throughout New Zealand, with one on a small island to the east. They can download data, plot record sections, identify P and S waves, and draw circles to produce seismicity maps. One interesting refinement is the addition of notch filters to remove ocean noise, just as was fashionable in observatories nearly a century ago. It is a highly effective programme but is poorly funded and will be difficult to maintain; IT support in particular is limited. As in other parts of the world, the New Zealand team is working towards getting seismology into the school curriculum to increase and maintain teacher interest. Jean-Luc Berenguer (science teacher and project leader of the French seismic education network) gave his keynote talk on “Tuned in to Mars … from ‘SISMOS à l'Ecole’ with SEIS InSight”. The French have been teaching seismology for more than 20 years in French schools all over the world. Seismology is in the curriculum, with a database specifically for education, and there are geoscience teachers able to teach the subject in geography, physics and maths courses. Seismometers may be of the blackbox or TC1 variety (figure 4b), depending on the preference of the school. Special software like AMASEIS has been created for them. These are supplemented by laboratory models to simulate Earth materials, such as lasagne and warm chocolate or chocolate from the fridge. Students who are not computer literate find these particularly useful. Schools are encouraged to communicate with each other and with the project HQ to exchange ideas and information. Schools have been invited to apply for selection to work on seismic data from the InSight space mission data from Mars. 15 schools have accepted the challenge and will be selected based on how they perform with a set of synthetic data. Susana Custodia (University of Lisbon) gave an illuminating talk on the interface between citizen science and civil protection in Portugal. The largest earthquake known in Europe was the devastating offshore Lisbon event on All Saints Day 1755, which was regarded as an act of God. But this event was the starting point of modern seismology as people began to enquire about the effects in the rest of Europe, including the UK and Ireland. There was a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in 1969 so there is a high degree of public awareness and the university is called upon to advise on seismology in schools and in the country at large. Interestingly, some enquiries in schools come from biology teachers who seek help from physicists in building their own detectors and even shake tables to study the effects on buildings. One graduate student is using ocean-bottom seismometers to study the sounds of whales. The civil authorities are actively involved with making risk maps and developing civil protection measures. Similar objectives relating to earthquake damage were mentioned by participants from other seismic areas – Nicos Melis (Greece), Francesco Finazzi (Italy), Shiba Subedi and Surya Acharya (Nepal) and Wist Bloch (Israel). Rondell Liverpool is involved with a new school programme in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Caribbean Seismic Network is based, and needs to expand to the volcanic islands, some of which already have French and American stations to link with. Other issues and problems Other citizen seismic issues mentioned during the meeting were the monitoring of fracking by Anna Horleston (Bristol University) and Jefferson Chang (Oklahoma), landslides by Emma Bee (British Geological Survey)and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by Thomas Blake (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies). A common problem that came up in the discussions was that of maintaining the interest of secondary school teachers where seismology was not in the curriculum. Occasionally the converse occurs with enthusiastic teachers who obtain spectacular results. A good example is Vika Moisey (primary school teacher at Birdwell Academy, Bristol) who enthused nine-year-old pupils about earthquake waves, damage and convection in the Earth – they even built their own detector (Moisey 2017). It is a useful pointer for the future as there is a need to get younger people interested in physical science as early as possible to fill university places in science and engineering to address the issue of staff shortages in these areas. Details of this and future meetings This discussion workshop was held at the Geological Society meeting rooms in London on 15–16 February 2018, with financial support from the British Geophysical Association, UNESCO and the European Union. The meeting was attended by 47 registered delegates from 18 different countries: Australia, France, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Nepal, New Zealand, Palestine, Panama, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad, UK and the USA. The initiation by the SERA group and support from UNESCO are good pointers for the future. There is a long way to go and the need for regular meetings was emphasized. It was agreed that the coordination would continue with planned shared sessions at the European Seismological Commission meeting in Malta in September 2018, and the 2019 joint assembly of IASPEI and IUGG in Montreal. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The meeting received financial support from SERA, UNESCO, the BGA, the BGS, and the University of Leicester; use of rooms from the Geological Society; and administrative support from the BGS and the RAS. MORE INFORMATION The meeting presentations can be seen at https://bit.ly/2JTW42G. REFERENCES Balfour N J et al. 2014 Seismol. Res. Lett. 85 ( 5 ) 1063 CrossRef Search ADS Bossu R et al. 2018 Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 28 32 CrossRef Search ADS Braile L W et al. 2003 Seismol. Res. Lett. 74 503 CrossRef Search ADS Denton P 2008 Astron. & Geophys. 49 6.13 CrossRef Search ADS Kong Q et al. 2016 Geophys. Res. Lett. 106 9369 Moisey V 2017 Young Scientists Journal 17 Zollo A et al. 2014 in Geoscience Research and Outreach ed. V Tong ( Springer ) 145 Google Scholar CrossRef Search ADS © 2018 Royal Astronomical Society
TI - Engaging citizen seismologists worldwide
JF - Astronomy & Geophysics
DO - 10.1093/astrogeo/aty190
DA - 2018-08-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/engaging-citizen-seismologists-worldwide-8kkoXGpUEp
SP - 1
EP - 18
VL - Advance Article
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -