This is a survey to see how many people might be interested in the creation of an “Earthquake forecast registry file.” Several other people have proposed that such a file be created.

If you are interested then you can post a response to this note or send me a note by e-mail. If enough people express an interest then I will see if some discussions can get going in an effort to get that registry file organized.

THE FUTILITY OF POSTING EARTHQUAKE FORECASTS TO WEB SITES ETC.

There are quite a few people who are posting their earthquake forecasts to Web sites, Internet Newsgroups, and Internet Bulletin Boards such as this one. However there is something which many of those people might not realize.

I talk fairly often with government officials, international disaster mitigation personnel, and other earthquake forecasters around the world. And what I am hearing from them is that none of the earthquake forecasts being stored anywhere on the Internet are of any use to them. The problem is that those people do not have time to check different Web sites etc. for the forecast data. And even if they did then they might not understand the information in a given forecast.

What I believe might work is to have forecasts stored in a single file at some Web site. People could then access that file and see everyone’s forecasts at once. A separate report with all of the forecasts entered on a given day might also be automatically posted each day to this bulletin board. People could then comment on individual forecasts in the report.

The following report discusses that proposed file in more detail. The registry file would not be used to prove that this or that person predicted some earthquake but rather to make forecast information available to people who might be interested in it.

Proposed Earthquake Forecast Registry Web Page
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/111.html#Forecast-Registry

or

Proposed Earthquake Forecast Registry Web Page
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/112.html#Forecast-Registry

That report will be at least temporarily stored at one or the other of those addresses.

These are my own opinions.