A computer programming project for Roger or anyone (plus) A May 3, 2011 disaster mitigation meeting - Posted by EQF on April 28, 2011

Hi Roger and all,

This report contains a description of a computer program that could be written in any language including TrueBasic. I personally feel that it could be quite valuable to earthquake researchers around the world. One part of the program would focus on data that I myself specifically need. The other part would be more general.

Part 1 (needed as soon as possible)

Earthquake data can be obtained from the online NEIC catalog. But there are relatively few options available for filtering and processing the data.

This proposed program would import global NEIC earthquake data (3.0 magnitude and greater) from an Input.txt or Input.dat file on the computer.

Part 1 of the program would:

*** Reverse the order of the earthquakes in the list so that the most recent earthquakes were at the top of the list.

*** Import data from a Filter.txt or Filter.dat file that would specify that certain earthquakes should be removed from the list based on their longitude and magnitude. Other filter options could be added later.

So, typical lines in Filter.txt or Filter.dat would be the following:

144E 4.5
143E 5.0

When the program saw those lines it would remove any earthquakes in the list that occurred between 143.500E and 144.499E and had a magnitude lower than 4.5, and also earthquakes that occurred between 142.500E and 143.499E that had a magnitude lower than 5.0

The date range for the earthquakes being processed would be set by what earthquakes were in the Input.txt or Input.dat file. The entire NEIC catalog would not be used at once in that file.

The program would then display the remaining acceptable earthquakes and also store them in an output file called Output.txt or Output.dat.

The reason for that selective processing feature would be to get rid of the many fairly powerful earthquakes and low magnitude ones that occur during the months after an especially powerful earthquake occurs.

My forecasting computer program assumes that earthquakes and their aftershocks are being selectively triggered by forces related to the gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon. However, a good percentage of the aftershocks occurring during the months following the original earthquake are simply being triggered at random times by the rapid transfer of stress or strain to their fault zones from the fault zone where the original earthquake occurred. And those random triggering time earthquakes just create background noise for my forecasting program. They need to be filtered out of the database file even thought some of them can be quite powerful.

Part 2 (a long range permanent project)

This part of the program might make the program developer fairly popular with earthquake researchers around the world.

The program would take the NEIC earthquakes in the Input.txt or Input.dat file and start adding data to them. It would then produce a new earthquake list with entries perhaps best separated by semicolons. A file with entries at fixed locations in each data line could also be generated.

Standard data would be:

*** earthquake date and time (2011/04/28 12:34:56 UTC)
*** latitude and longitude
*** magnitude and depth

Added data would be things like the following where they applied. Some of these data such as the number of fatalities etc. could be stored in a separate file that the program could read each time it ran.

*** country name or location (ex. east Atlantic ocean) where it occurred
*** number of fatalities the earthquake produced
*** number of injuries
*** number of buildings damaged
*** earthquake damage in current U.S. dollars, and perhaps Eurodollars and Yen
*** subsolar and sublunar locations on the Earth’s surface at the time of the earthquake
*** distances between the Earth and the moon and the Earth and the sun at the time of the earthquake
*** special types of information the program user might want to add to the start or end of a data line or such as a "special" status marker for local earthquakes

Other types of data could be gradually added to those expanded data lines such as the gravity strength of the sun and the moon moon on the Earth and the velocities and directions of the sun and the moon relative to the surface of the Earth at the time of the earthquake. For example, the moon velocity would be X kilometers per hour headed in the direction of 270 degrees (north is 0 degrees, south is 180 degrees) at the time of the earthquake.

Updates for that earthquake list would be stored one of my Web sites or anywhere people desired, and be available to researchers around the world. The program itself and the source code would also be available at one or more Web sites.

The USGS already has lists that contain some of those types of data. But the USGS people basically do whatever they themselves want to do or do not want to do. And the international earthquake research community needs additional data such as estimates of the amount of damage in current U.S. dollars for destructive earthquakes.

I myself have other computer programming projects and other projects such as the following one that I need to finish and do not presently have time to develop that particular program.

Disaster Mitigation Meeting

There is a meeting scheduled to be held in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, May 3, 2011 where experts from various groups such as FEMA and the FCC will be discussing what might be done to improve U.S. disaster response plans based on what was learned from that catastrophic March 11, 2011 earthquake in Japan.

For the next few days I am planning to be working on a detailed disaster mitigation proposal to send to those people. They can then consider developing the highly sophisticated but relatively inexpensive disaster mitigation communications types of technology in the proposal if they are interested.

The physical entities related to those technologies such as cell telephones and CB radios already exist. But the sophisticated Internet based international disaster response network for using them that I will be proposing does not yet exist. And it should. I tried to get the U.N. to develop it years ago. But internal U.N. politics appeared to have prevented it from being developed.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/467459-FCC_to_Host_Earthquake_Communications_Preparedness_Forum.php?rssid=20065

These are personal opinions.

• May 3, 2011 Disaster Mitigation Meeting